The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1) (26 page)

ALL THE STONES KNOW YOUR NAME.

Time was up. The sheets of light slicing from the Seven Mirrors all vanished at once. Bereft of their ambient light, the Eye in Kibi’s hand lost its green color and now looked like a spherical diamond. He brought it close to his nose and peered into it; at its center was a little dot of black, no larger than a pea, a sphere within a sphere.

“May I see that for a moment?”

Sagiro’s request was made so casually, so reasonably, that Kibi nearly handed it over on instinct. But he stayed his hand and took a step back.

“I don’t think I oughta,” he said warily. “You ran out here awful quick to grab it. Why?”

“I’m a collector,” said Sagiro. “Gems that large and…unusual…are quite rare, wouldn’t you agree? But what about you? Why did your friends rush out to attack the man who held it?”

Kibi glanced over to where his six companions were standing up. On the ground by their feet was the man Tor had tackled; tall, hairless, and with skin the color of a ripe blueberry. The Sharshun lay on his back, eyes staring up lifelessly, a red froth oozing from the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t see how that’s your business,” said Kibi.

Sagiro looked down upon the Sharshun. “To all appearances, your friends have murdered that poor fellow. How will you explain it, I wonder?”

Kibi ignored that problem for the moment. “Who was he?” he asked.

The mustachioed man abruptly turned to face the crowd of onlookers, which had been slowly shifting forward to see what was happening with the company and the blue-skinned Sharshun. Even to the last, Kibi expected that Sagiro would offer some sensible defense on their behalf, but the façade of friendship crumbled as the man spoke.

“My fellow citizens of Harkran!” Sagiro shouted. “These people have done foul murder! It is your duty to detain them, so that they may answer for their heinous crime. I will ride quickly for Tal Inniston, to fetch members of the local constabulary.” So saying, Sagiro dashed away, parting the startled crowd, to where a horse waited patiently, tied to a tent stake.

Kibi cursed himself for misreading his new acquaintance so badly. To his companions he asked, “Is he dead?”

Aravia nodded. “Yes, but he killed himself. I think. Some kind of poison…”

“To make sure he couldn’t be captured and interrogated,” said Morningstar.

The masses of onlookers, several hundred people at least, milled about uncertainly. Some were armed, and Kibi knew there was little to be done if the mob turned hostile. Not even Morningstar would be willing to fight and possibly injure or kill innocent citizens, citizens who’d think they were doing a good deed.

A few of the braver and more physically imposing individuals were looking at one another, waiting to see who would make the first move. Kibi figured that any minute now, someone would demand that they drop their weapons, and start asking questions about how the Sharshun had died and why they had attacked him in the first place. Kibi sure hoped his friends had good answers. Maybe Dranko could talk them clear.

“Ernest? Ernest Roundhill?” A large and elderly woman pushed her way to the front, and those near her made plenty of room, looking relieved that someone was taking charge. The seven of them
did
make a formidable-looking squad.

“Mrs. Appleford?” Ernie stepped forward with an anxious smile. “I promise we didn't kill that man. You know I’d never be part of something that…that criminal.”

Mrs. Appleford shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought it, but then what just happened here? That boy.” She pointed to Tor. “He knocked that fellow to the ground, and you all ran out to help him, and…is that person truly dead? Why is his skin such a strange color?”

Ernie opened his mouth, closed it again, looked around nervously. The truth was going to sound ridiculous, but Kibi knew that Ernie was so honest, he was unlikely to offer up anything else.

“He killed himself,” Ernie managed. “He…I don’t think he wanted to be questioned…”

Mrs. Appleford and the rest of the Flashing Day crowd waited for something more definitive. Ernie glanced at Dranko, took a deep breath as if he was about to try a standing broad jump across a pit of snakes, and said with a shocking amount of conviction, “That man is part of an order that was trying to destroy the Mirrors! That’s the whole reason we were sent here—to stop him from carrying out his evil scheme. Our goal was to simply subdue him, and to learn more about his organization, but he—”

“He poisoned himself,” said Aravia. She had been examining the Sharshun’s mouth, which had continued to foam even minutes after his death. “It appears he had a poison sac lodged in the roof of his mouth, which he broke open with his tongue.”

“Mrs. Appleford,” said Ernie. “I left White Ferry about a month ago, remember? Tell all these people why.”

The woman’s eyes went wide as she pieced together the puzzle. She turned to face the crowd behind her. “Young Ernest here was summoned to Tal Hae by a powerful wizard.”

Ernie indicated his friends. “We all were. And this is why we’re here today. The archmage of Tal Hae sent us to stop that man.”

“It’s true,” said a tall man in a straw hat. “I even seen the letter myself, from the wizard-upon-high who lives in the big city. Ernest Roundhill here is as honest a young gentleman as you are ever likely to meet. We’ve known his family since he was born, and if he tells you him and his friends didn’t kill nobody, and that there dead fellow was up to no good, you can be darned sure it’s the truth.”

Ernie’s face turned beet red, but the murmur in the crowd changed noticeably in tenor, from tentatively hostile to relieved and congratulatory. Several people came forward to shake his hand and look with disgusted fascination upon the body of the Sharshun as it lay at the foot of the northernmost Mirror.

Kibi slipped the Eye of Moirel into his pocket.

CHAPTER TWENTY

MOST OF MASTER Serpicore’s library of six hundred volumes were histories, treatises on magical theories, or essays explaining proper mental exercises and techniques for improving one’s focus as an arcane caster. A smaller number were biographies of famous wizards and scholars of decades long past. About a dozen were novels, poorly written, some containing scenes of surprising prurience given Serpicore’s buttoned-up sensibilities.

But on the library’s back wall, on high shelves that Aravia was forbidden to approach, were Serpicore’s seventy-nine books containing full magical formulae for more than two hundred different spells and variants. According to Serpicore it was one of the finest collections of arcane formulations ever assembled, and Aravia had no reason to doubt it.

On four different occasions over her two years of apprenticeship, Aravia had made plans to sneak into the library and steal a look at those seventy-nine tomes. The fourth time she had actually tried it, and in so doing learned that Serpicore had not been bluffing about the magical safeguards he employed to prevent unauthorized access. Her fingertips had been numb for almost a week afterward.

Knowledge and its accumulation were the most important things in her life. Knowing that she shared a house with seventy-nine spellbooks that she was forbidden to read was like working in a bakery and being denied the bread.

From the moment she had appeared in Abernathy’s tower and realized that the invitation had not in fact been a puzzling hoax on the part of her teacher, Aravia had hoped that her archmagely patron would share
his
spellbooks with her. Surely one of the greatest wizards ever to put on a robe would have a library at least as impressive as Serpicore’s. When he had made his plea that she join his team that first night in the Greenhouse, he had promised to grant her access to a library he had described as “impressive, if disorganized.” But since then, Abernathy’s distracted nature and constant attendance to Naradawk Skewn’s prison had conspired to prevent him from following through on his promise. Now, as Grey Wolf turned his key in the Greenhouse door, she resolved that this time she would not let him put off the subject any longer.

She need not have worried. The oversized living room bookcase, empty since they had taken up residence, was now jammed with tomes.

Eddings walked in from the dining room. “Welcome home, good sirs and madams. I trust everything went well in your latest travels?”

Aravia was far too distracted to answer. She rushed to the bookshelf and pulled down a volume at random. Its title page announced
Formulae and Variants on the Casting of Spontaneous Levitation
.

“Ah, yes,” said Eddings, as the rest of the company dropped their packs and hung up their cloaks. “Abernathy delivered these books the very evening that you departed. He asked me to convey his regrets that his available lending stock was not more extensive, along with a warning that as a relative novice, you may find his personal style of transcription and note-taking to be opaque.”

Not more extensive? There were easily five hundred books here, and if even half of them contained spell formulae, it would be nearly triple what Serpicore had on his shelves. She flipped open the book on levitation to one of its opening pages.

It was full of gibberish. It wasn’t in a foreign language—the words themselves were legible and in Chargish—but they didn’t follow any of the standard protocols and known forms for spell recipes.

She scanned ahead six pages. More gobbledygook. She skipped to the end, and on the final page, beneath a large inscrutable diagram, were the words “
More experimentation is warranted, but I believe the previous chapters adequately summarize the primary variants on both area-based and object-based levitation.”

Two more books, one on rapid short-range teleportation and the other on synchronizing the visual and aural aspects of simple illusions, were similarly impenetrable. Given enough time she could puzzle through Abernathy’s dense and mysterious magical dialect, but it would be easier if she could ask him a few general questions first.

Aravia returned the books to the shelf. “We should report in.” Abernathy would want to know about the Seven Mirrors and Kibi’s Eye of Moirel, which was sufficient pretense for bothering him about the spellbooks.

“I’ll say,” said Dranko. “We need to thank him.”

Dranko had emptied a sack of small red and white rocks out onto the table. Eddings walked over next to him. “After delivering Aravia’s books, Abernathy retrieved that bag of gemstones. He was in a great hurry by that time; something in his tower was alarming him severely. But regarding them he left another message: that he had remembered an old stash of opals he had always meant to use as ritual components, and he hoped they would be adequate as a fresh source of funds.”

Dranko laughed and held one of the opals to his eye. “These are adequate in the same way that an entire cow would be adequate for dinner.” He turned to Grey Wolf. “Do you forgive Abernathy for summoning us now? We get to see the world, fight against evil, live in a ritzy house, and get paid handsomely for it. What’s not to like?”

“I don’t know,” said Grey Wolf dryly. “Why don’t we ask Ysabel Horn that question? My recollection is that Abernathy summoned her, and she died a meaningless death. Do you remember that, Dranko? When you claimed you were a channeler? Do you forgive Abernathy for summoning
her?”

Dranko turned red, looked away from Grey Wolf, and said nothing.

Aravia had nearly forgotten about Mrs. Horn. Did that make her a bad person? She didn’t think so. Serpicore had counseled that a successful arcanist harbored no regrets; like all emotions, they were only distractions, impediments to forward learning. Either way, this sort of exchange served no good purpose. “So, Abernathy!”

She bounded to the foyer and up the stairs while the others followed. Inside the secret room, the crystal ball filled with mist, and within seconds the metal head of Mister Golem filled its round interior.

“Dammit,” she muttered.

“Abernathy is unavailable under any circumstance,” said the tinny voice.

“But what if it’s an emergency?” Aravia blurted before she could stop herself.

“It’s not, is it?” said Ernie.

“Abernathy is unavailable under any circumstance,” repeated Mister Golem. “Please carry out his previous instructions.”

“What do you think happened to him?” asked Tor. “Do you think he’s dead? Did Naradawk get out?”

Aravia tried to keep the keen disappointment from her voice. “No. He warned us this might happen, remember? My guess is that Naradawk is making a push to escape, and Abernathy needs all of his focus and concentration to thwart that attempt.”

“Then let’s leave him to it,” said Grey Wolf. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, and tomorrow morning we’ll find a ship that can take us to Seablade Point. We’ll see if Abernathy’s magical archway is working.”

Aravia would just have to puzzle through Abernathy’s dialect on her own. The others would take care of the mundane details of planning and preparation for the trip to Seablade Point, while she made a start on the books. In the living room she scanned the shelves, looking for anything that looked like a primer, and though she failed to find one, there
was
a thin tome whose spine read
On Locks.
Lacking any better method of teaching herself Abernathy’s opaque style of spell transcription, she could start with something she already knew and work sideways. She slid out the book, scratched her cheek, grabbed another three books that seemed interesting, and carried the pile to a chair by the fireplace.

She was still on the first page of
On Locks
when Kibi sat in the chair next to her.

“Aravia,” he said in his deep, slow voice. “You got a minute or two to chat?”

She was tempted to say no, so great was her impatience to read, but with a sigh she set the book on her lap. “What is it, Kibi?”

“It’s about…magic.”

Well, she could spare a minute or two.

“I never did fancy myself a magicker,” said Kibi, “what I can do with stone and all.”

Oh, that. His not-really-magic. “I remember you telling me, in the woods near Verdshane. What exactly
do
you do with stone?”

“I…I understand it,” he said slowly. “I can shape it with m’ fingers, kind a’ tell it what to do. And sometimes it tells me things, too.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looked away, looked back again. “When you do your spells, how does it work? What does it feel like, if you get me? Is it all book-learnin’, or is it a deep-down kind a’ thing?”

“It’s both,” she said. “Most people cannot perform magic under any circumstance. Whether you have the potential is mostly luck, though family inheritance plays a part.” Seeing Kibi’s confusion, she clarified. “I mean if your parents were wizards, you have a better chance of being one yourself.”

“Oh. Were your parents wizards then?”

“My mother was, in an inconsequential way. The only thing she ever learned to do was make weak magical lights. She was not…well-suited for the rigors of training. See, that’s the other part. It’s not enough to have the gift. You also have to work extremely hard, studying and memorizing and practicing every day for hours, week after week, month after month. And even then, to be more than a hedge-wizard, you need to have a knife-sharp mind. Which, fortunately for me, I do.”

Kibi just stared at her for a moment, and she hoped, having answered so thoroughly, that he would wander off and leave her to her books.

“I’m only askin’,” said Kibi, his words coming in slow motion, “’cause them Seven Mirrors, they…”

The stonecutter stopped, closed his mouth.

“They what?”

Kibi produced the Eye of Moirel from his pocket. During the kerfuffle with the suicidal Sharshun, only Kibi had noticed that their bald adversary was holding a gem in his hand, a gem the stonecutter had claimed was trailing a green fire, though she hadn’t seen it. He had shown it to the rest of Horn’s Company on the walk back from the Mirrors. Now he held it in his palm, a large, smooth diamond, perfectly round, with a marble of jet lodged impossibly in its center.

“They’re a source a’ some kind a’ powerful magic, is what I’m sayin’. And I think I could do somethin’ with it, if I could figure out how, but it ain’t nothin’ I got any experience with. Heck, this here Eye a’ Moirel feels like it’s getting antsy. It talked to me too, when I first picked it up, but only when them crazy lights was flashin’. And then the Mirrors talked to me on top a’ that, though they didn’t make no sense. I ain’t told no one ’bout that part yet.”

“Kibi, I can’t figure out what you’re asking.”

“Right. I guess I ain’t sure yet, what all I need to know. Maybe now that you’ve got all them magicky books, one of ’em could help figure out what this here Eye is for.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Serpicore mentioned that there were spells for identifying the properties of enchanted objects but that there was little point in learning them since such objects were so scarce.”

Her books beckoned, but the notion of a magical talking gemstone
was
intriguing. She reached out to take the gem from Kibi, but it hopped from his hand to the floor, like a cricket aware it was about to be captured. The two of them stared, startled and fascinated, as it rolled quickly across the floor toward the foyer.

“Guess we should get after it,” said Kibi.

Aravia sprang from her chair and the two gave chase. The Eye of Moirel turned sharply before it reached the front door and bounced up the stairs two at a time like a children’s ball come to life. Aravia and Kibi scrambled to keep up.

“You get back here!” Kibi cried, but the diamond paid no heed. By the time Aravia reached the upstairs hallway, it had rolled twenty feet down and stopped in front of Ernie’s door, glinting in the light of Abernathy’s heatless torches.

Kibi puffed up behind her. “What’s it doin‘?”

“I don’t know.”

It rolled sharply into the bottom of the door, struck, and bounced off.

“Come in,” came Ernie’s voice.

The Eye of Moirel vibrated on the wood floor of the hallway, its rapid tapping sounding like chattering teeth. Just as Aravia took a step forward for a better look, it blasted
through
the door like it had been shot from a ballista, with such force that it left a nearly perfect round hole with only a few ragged splinters. A startled yelp came from inside the room.