CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shandi’s rejection
was an almost physical slap, one that left Jade pressing a hand to
her lurching stomach as the door swung shut at the winikin’s back. Gods, she hated fighting. And if
more than once along the line she’d thought she could deal with
Shandi if she only knew what the winikin’s problem was, she’d been way off on that
one. Knowing the winikin’s history only
made things worse by slapping her upside the head with the reality
she’d long avoided: Her winikin didn’t
just not love her; she actively resented her, and blamed
her—rightly or not—for the deaths of the people she had loved.
And oh, holy hell,
that sucked.
“It wasn’t my fault,”
Jade whispered, finding a kernel of frustration amidst the
sickening dismay. “I didn’t pick her as my winikin, and I didn’t force her to choose me over
them. The magic might have, but I’m not the magic. I shouldn’t be
blamed for it.” Unfortunately, knowing that she had a valid point
didn’t do anything to smooth over the raw, ragged
edges.
The counselor’s cool
was long gone. Jade took brief satisfaction in imagining a cartoon
version of herself, red faced, with steam coming out of her ears,
but that was still a woefully inadequate outlet for the churned-up
feelings inside her. For the first time since completing the
rudimentary firearms training course all the magi had gone through
when they had first come to Skywatch, she was tempted to head down
to the firing range and shoot the crap out of some targets. She
hadn’t been all that great a shot, but a pump-action shotgun loaded
with jadeshot required approximately the finesse of spray paint.
Point and shoot she could do, she thought, as long as she didn’t
try one of Michael’s advanced training runs, which featured moving
targets and good guys standing next to bad. Bull’s-eyes she could
handle. She would go shoot some stationary targets. That’d make her
feel better, she thought, or at least allow her to burn off some
steam.
Pleased to have a
plan of sorts, even one that was uncharacteristically violent, she
made a quick circuit of the archive to put away the few things that
were out of place. She was suddenly buzzed to get going; she wanted
the thud of recoil, the tearing of paper targets. Hurrying now, her
skull throbbing with a headache that was rapidly turning to a
rattling, humming whine, she reached to grab the Idiot’s Guide, which lay on the conference table
where she had dropped it.
It was still open to
the fireball spell. Her eyes skimmed over the glyphs as she moved
to shut the book. And she froze.
On the page, the
glyphs began to glow, radiating off the page and drifting toward
her, outlined not in ink, but in bright red-gold fluorescence
against a sudden backdrop of blurred images. She gaped as two of
the glyphs shimmered and morphed, becoming entirely different
syllables in the phonetic system. The humming whine became a song,
and the buzz of anger in her blood suddenly felt like . . .
magic.
Abruptly, the
red-gold, almost holographic writing flared brightly, then
disappeared, but the afterimage stayed imprinted in her brain. The
air had gone strangely cold.
She mouthed the
syllables and felt something wrench inside her. A tingling
sensation flared from her center to her extremities and then
reversed course, fleeing back up her arms and into her body,
leaving her chilled. Breathing hard, unable to get enough oxygen,
she looked around wildly, but nothing had changed in the
shelf-lined room. Nothing but the syllables that danced in her
mind’s eye. Cool heat spun inside her; the spell hovered at the
edges of her mind, tempting her. Daring her. Mad euphoria gripped
her as something deep inside whispered, Try
it. What have you got to lose?
Leaving the book
where it lay, she held her lightly scarred palms out in front of
her, making it look as if she were cupping an imaginary basketball,
as she’d seen the warriors do when she’d watched them practice
their fighting magic and pretended she didn’t mind being on the
sidelines. Then, halfway convinced that nothing at all was going to
happen, she tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and recited the
spell aloud.
Magic detonated
within her, ripping a scream from her throat, more from surprise
than pain. The air shimmered between her outstretched hands, and
then blinding blue-white flashed simultaneously with a crackling
roar that was like being inside a clap of thunder. On the heels of
the flash-boom, a shock wave hammered away from her, sending her
staggering back as the archive door exploded. Cold seared across her skin, a frigidity
so intense that she couldn’t tell if it was fire or ice; she knew
only that it burned. She heard crashes and shouts in the hallway
and main mansion, then a second huge detonation that rocked the
whole damn building, even the reinforced security of the
archive.
As quickly as it had
come, the magic drained from her in a rush. The noise quieted. Or
rather, the noise of the immediate destruction died down, to be
replaced with shouts of alarm and tersely snapped orders as the
warriors prepared to man a defense.
Oh, shit, Jade thought on a spurt of horrified
adrenaline. They think we’re under
attack! She had to get out there and explain, but she
couldn’t move. She was frozen in place, not by the magic or shock
now, but by the sight of the crazy, misplaced winter wonderland
that surrounded her.
She hadn’t created a
fireball. She had summoned ice.
The walls, floor,
ceiling, bookcases, and every other damn thing that had been to the
sides or behind her when she’d recited the spell were covered in a
thick layer of furry white frost, as though the whole room had been
stuck in a giant freezer that had missed out on the past fifty
years of frost- free technology. In front of her, where her
inadvertent and out-of-control . . . iceball, she supposed, had
exploded away from her, the door was gone, along with most of the
wall. In their place were sheets of ice and drifts of frosty snow
that extended far out into the hallway. The opposite wall was
frost-crazed, the windows cracked from the quick war between the
heat outside and the insta- freeze within. And, as far as she could
tell, the snow and ice kept going on down the hallway. She was
pretty sure that last big detonation had come from the great
room.
“Oh, gods,” she
moaned. What if she had hurt someone? Yanking herself from her
paralysis, she bolted out of the archive, slipped on a wide patch
of ice just outside the door, and went down on her knees. Water
soaked through her jeans almost immediately; the frost layer was
already melting, saturating the walls and floor and dripping from
the ceiling.
“Jade!” It was
Sasha’s voice, relieved. Armed with a submachine gun she held with
easy familiarity, she was partway up the hall, slipping and
slithering as she followed the ice trail to its source. “What
happened? Was it Iago?”
Jade’s legs gave out
on her at that, and she found herself sitting in a puddle of
meltwater, gaping as the Nightkeepers charged up the hallway toward
her, most of them armed, all of them coming to defend Skywatch
against . . . her. She started to laugh, tried to swallow it, and
ended up emitting a ridiculous hiccup that had Sasha’s expression
going to one of pure worry.
Before her friend
could go into healer mode, Jade waved to fend her off. “No, I’m
fine, really. Better than fine. I’m sorry about the door, though.
And the walls. And the windows.” She looked around her at the
growing melt, cringing at the destruction, then, when she
remembered what the archive had looked like, wailed, “And the
books!” They were all scanned into the digital system, but
still.
“Jade!” Michael gripped her shoulder and gave her a
none-too-gentle shake. “Was Iago here? Did something happen with
one of the artifacts?”
“No.” The hysterical
laughter threatened to burble up again. “Something happened with
me. I did it, all of it. I finally
wrote a spell. Or manipulated it, at least.” As she watched, a huge
blob of slush let go of the ceiling and fell down the back of
Michael’s neck.
“Gah!” He
straightened abruptly, pawing at his nape, then scowled when the
others laughed at him. He glared around. “Can we get out of here
and continue this someplace dry?”
“I’d suggest the
great room,” a new voice broke in, “but the furniture’s gone . . .
along with most of the floor, and what looks like part of the gym
downstairs.” Strike made his way through the crowd. Dressed in full
black-on-black combat gear and wearing a loaded weapons belt, he
was even more intimidating than usual. He glared around, not
immediately locking on Jade. “What in the hell is going on here? We have rules about
experimenting, you know. As in fucking
don’t unless you’re in the training hall, where you can’t
destroy too much expensive stuff.”
Jade closed her eyes
as her brief amusement fled. She was starting to shake now, with a
combination of reaction and what she suspected was going to be a
hell of a postmagic crash. “I did it. It was all my fault. I was
looking at the fireball spell in the Idiot’s
Guide, and it morphed into something else in front of my
eyes. I recited what I saw and . . .” She trailed off, opened her
eyes, and looked around, seeing a few faces missing. Including
Lucius’s and Shandi’s. Fresh worry clutched at her. “Did I hurt
anyone?”
The king shook his
head. “We got lucky.” From the sudden satisfied glint in his eyes,
she got the feeling he wasn’t entirely unhappy with what had just
happened. He reached down and, before she knew what was happening,
he had hauled her vertical and was leading her along the hallway,
where their feet squished on the meltwater-soaked runner. “The
great room was empty. Jox was in the kitchen, but he ducked behind
the breakfast bar when the leading edge hit. The power was
dissipating as it came, so by the time it reached the kitchen it
was down to a spring frost and a couple inches of
snow.”
That dry rundown
didn’t even come close to prep-ping Jade for the sight that
confronted her when she stepped through the arched doorway with the
others crowding behind her.
The sitting area was
demolished. Jagged, frozen chunks of what might have been the comfy
chairs and assorted pillows were scattered across the space, which
was draped with sharp-edged splashes of crystalline ice and drifts
of snow. The sliders had blown out and snow drifted onto the pool
deck, where it melted pretty much the second it hit the sun-baked
deck. A large, dark shape lurked in the pool, leviathanesque. She
was pretty sure it was the couch.
Holy. Shit.
Jade knotted her
fingers together, her stomach churning as it had right before the
magic, only more in an I’m-going-to-vomit way. “I’m so sorry.” She
directed the apology at Jox, who had overseen the renovations and
always did his level best to keep the mansion clean and comfortable
for everyone. “Gods. I’m sorry.”
The winikin’s expression bordered on wild. “Ice,” he
said faintly. “There’s no such thing as an ice spell.”
“There is now.” She
glanced at her scribe’s mark. “I think I just made it up. Or my
talent did.”
“Just like that?”
Strike snapped his fingers. “No warning?”
At that moment,
Lucius appeared from the direction of the cottages, moving fast,
his eyes hard and hot. He hesitated at the sight of the melting
snowdrifts and the submerged sofa, then strode through into the
ruined main room. His eyes swept the crowd and settled on her, then
skimmed past. His aggressive stance eased. “I take it we’re not
under attack?”
“Not an intentional
one,” Leah answered dryly. “Jade was just about to tell us about
when and how her powers started coming online. Because I’m guessing
this wasn’t the first clue.”
Jade winced. “Yes and
no. There was one other time, but I convinced myself it was
nothing.”
“This,” Sven said,
“is clearly something.” Patience elbowed him into
silence.
Flushing, Jade
sketched a brief summary of what she’d felt when she’d brought
herself out of the barrier, and how she’d glanced at a supposedly
gibberish text and seen a blessing instead. “I didn’t mention it
before because I was convinced the magic had come from the Vennie
nahwal, or that maybe she had tried to
jump-start my talent and failed because my magic is simply too
weak.”
“Apparently that’s
not the case.” Despite the fact that he was standing ankle-deep in
the melting mess and most of the living room was gone, Strike’s
eyes gleamed. “Congratulations, Jade. You’re a
scribe.”
“Yeah.” She grinned
up at him. “I am.” Her smile felt foolish, though, and his image
was a little watery around the edges, filtered as it was through
unshed tears. “I also think I’m about to pass out.”
She didn’t, but it
was pretty close.
Sasha and Michael
propped her up and got her to her suite; she waved off the offer of
an IV—she’d far rather pig out, thanks—but nodded floppily when Jox
called after them that he’d have Shandi bring food. She would’ve
warned him that Shandi was mad at her, but lacked the strength.
Besides, given that Jox was the royal winikin, he probably already knew what was going
on, and why. He’d already shown, though, that he wouldn’t interfere
in a winikin’s relationship with his or
her charge. Each winikin was chosen for
a reason, even if that reason wasn’t immediately obvious.
The gods move in mysterious ways, Jade
thought woozily.
Once she was in bed,
Sasha shooed Michael away and helped Jade undress and drag on an
oversize T-shirt. Jade was asleep before Sasha pulled the
curtains.
She awoke sometime
later to the sight of French toast and OJ on a tray at her bedside
table . . . and beyond that, Lucius sitting in the chair where she
typically dumped her clean laundry. He was reading.
He didn’t realize
right away that she was awake, giving her a few seconds to simply
watch him. In her mind’s eye, the moment kaleidoscoped to the many
times they’d read together in the archive, working separately but
together, each of them in their old guises. Now, as he frowned down
at the text—which was newly water-damaged, she saw with an inner
wince—she found his single-minded, almost fanatical concentration
arousing, in large part because she now knew that he brought that
same level of intensity to lovemaking. Sex, she reminded herself. Sex, not lovemaking. Keep your own rules straight.
Still, the sight heated her blood and tightened her skin despite
the tug of lingering fatigue.
“Good book?” she
said, drawing his attention before her thought process ran any
further aground on itself.
His head came up,
though it took him a second to pull himself out of the written
world and refocus on her. When he did, his lips curved in a long,
slow smile. “Not as useful as I would’ve liked.” He flashed her the
cover as he closed the book and set it aside; it was one of the
histories of the star bloodline that she had skimmed through
earlier and bypassed as being too superficial to be of any real
use. “You look better.”
“I’m not covered in
frost and wearing soaked jeans and an expression of terror, you
mean.” Even saying it brought a burst of pride laced with deeper,
less sure emotions.
“Something like
that.” He took her hand, idly turning it so they could both see her
forearm, where the scribe’s mark was unchanged, even though
everything was different. “Big day.”
“Yeah.” The grin felt
like it lit her from the inside out. “I’ve got magic.”
“I never doubted
it.”
They sat like that
for a moment, and Jade found her thoughts going not to the magic,
but to what had happened just before she cast the spell. “I talked
to Shandi again. She told me more about what happened right before
the massacre.”
“More about your
mother?”
“Not directly.”
Before she realized she was going to, that she needed to, she was
telling him about Shandi’s revelation, how it explained so much,
yet didn’t give her any options. The words spilled out of her,
tumbling over one another. “I’m not responsible for the will of the
gods,” she finished, “and I can’t undo the bond between us. Or
maybe I could, but to what end? Denny and Samxel are gone, just
like my parents are gone. Shandi—” She broke off, frustrated. “I
don’t know what to say to her. She’s been harboring a grudge for
twenty-six years. It seems inane somehow to say that I’m sorry for
her loss. More, if you ask me what I really think, it’s that she
needs to grow up and get over it already. It wasn’t my fault, and
blaming me for it is . . . pointless.”
“Shandi’s not stupid.
I have a feeling she knows that.”
Jade looked up at
him. “Meaning?”
“Maybe it stopped
being about you a long time ago and became the thing that keeps her
going from day to day,” he suggested. “And maybe she even realizes
that herself, but is afraid to let it go, afraid to let herself
care for you, knowing what the future might hold for all of
us.”
“That’s . . .” Jade
trailed off, thought for a moment, then finished, “. . . not the
dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Shit. Give me a minute here.”
Needing to make a mental shift, she pulled herself up to sit cross-
legged in the bed, with the sheet pulled over her legs. Pressing
her fingertips to her temples, she said, “You’re right. She lost
her family to war; it’s possible that she doesn’t want to run the
risk of living through that sort of loss again. Although I’d like
to point out that unless the Nightkeepers win the war, she wouldn’t have long to grieve,
because we’re all going to be wiped out in thirty or so months.”
Her stomach knotted on the thought, which suddenly seemed far more
real than it had before.
His expression went
grim. “Even if the Xibalbans and Banol
Kax are defeated and the cycle of time restarts, there are
going to be casualties. It’s only natural that we’re going to worry
about each other more and more as time passes, and that we’re going
to want to see the people we care about stay safe.”
Hope—her own personal
demon—stirred to life within her. “Are you saying you’d rather I
stay safely back behind the lines?” She didn’t want to have that
debate . . . but she thought she wouldn’t mind hearing him make the
pitch.
“We’re talking about
you and Shandi.”
“Right.” Her heart
took a little slide in her chest, though, warning that her emotions
were far too close to the surface. In the space of a few days,
she’d taken a lover who threatened to become too important to her.
She’d been to hell and back, had her worldview shifted, and met her
mother, though she hadn’t recognized it at the time. And now she’d
found her magic. She supposed it was understandable that her normal
defenses would be down. But that didn’t mean she was going to cave
to the first hint of pressure. She was through being that
woman.
She snagged a piece
of French toast off the tray and took a bite, both because she was
starving and to buy herself a moment before she said, “You think I
should . . . what? Stay in the background because it’ll make her
feel more secure? That’d be an illusion and you know it.
Furthermore, it’s bullshit.” She didn’t know when or how, but she
suddenly realized she’d come back around to the idea of wanting to
fight. Or maybe she did know. Maybe it was the moment she’d
accidentally leveled a showroom’s worth of furniture with ice
magic. If that wasn’t a fighter’s talent, she didn’t know what
was.
An image flashed in
her mind’s eye: that of a dark-haired baby with clenched fists and
a scowl on her face.
“That’s not what I’m
saying at all.” Lucius paused, considering. Finally, he said,
“There were a last few lines in the journal, at the very bottom,
that I haven’t told anyone about. I felt like they were a private
message between the journalist and the next Prophet, so I kept them
to myself. Now that we know who the journalist was, I think maybe
they were a message, but not for me. I
think she may have meant it for you.”
The air trickled out
of Jade’s lungs. Oh, Vennie. “What did
it say?”
“I may be flubbing a
word or two here, but the gist was: ‘Magic isn’t what’s going to
save the world. Love is. So find someone to love, and tell them so.
Better yet, show them your love by making them happy rather than
miserable. Don’t be an idiot like I was.’ ”
Jade’s eyes filled.
“She was talking about Joshua.”
“And
you.”
“Maybe. Probably. And
I’m sure she meant it at the time.” But an aching hollow opened up
beneath her diaphragm.
Lucius tilted his
head as he looked at her. She halfway expected him to hug her,
soothe her. And a large part of her would’ve welcomed it, for too
many reasons. He didn’t touch her, though, beyond the hand he still
held. Instead, he said, “It wasn’t your fault the gods chose Shandi
. . . and it wasn’t your mother’s fault she was
seventeen.”
“I know that. Of
course I know that. It’s just . . .” She paused, trying to sort
through her thoughts. Finally, she said, “It’s like there are two
versions of her inside my head now, two different thought chains
pertaining to her. On one hand, I pity her. I picture this spoiled,
ego-driven kid who wasn’t much different from half the teenagers
I’ve ever met. My heart hurts at the thought of her being so alone,
isolated from both her own family and her in- laws, convinced that
she’d been chosen as the next Prophet but the others couldn’t see
it. How can I blame her for that? We’re doing the same thing now,
trying to interpret the will of the gods from old prophecies and
and a few scattered clues. When I think of her going through the
library spell alone, it makes me so sad for her. And then, when she
came back out and tried to go home . . .” She trailed off as the
hollowness inside her turned to an ache. “I want to weep for that
child. I want to thank her for her sacrifice, and promise her that
we won’t let her down. But at the same time, I’m so damned
angry at her. I hate knowing that she
took on adult responsibilities—a husband, a baby—and bailed when
things stopped being fun. I saw too much of that in the outside
world.” Exhaling, she stared at her free hand, which had formed a
fist. “And I hate that I’m seeing my father as a victim. I don’t
know him, but I know the type.” She had counseled people like him
over and over again, albeit mostly women. “I don’t . . . Shit, I
don’t know. I hate being inconsistent when it comes to her, but I
can’t seem to stop myself from pitying the girl I think of as
Vennie while resenting the person who was my mother, when her only
sin, really, is not matching up to the image in my head.” She
glanced at Lucius, expecting him to look baffled—or worse,
concerned for her mental health.
Instead, he nodded.
“I get that, I think. It’s Nightkeeper versus human. On one hand,
she was following the writs, putting the greater good ahead of her
family, and you know you should respect her, maybe even celebrate
her, for that sacrifice. But on the other hand, you’re the family she left behind, which has to
hurt. What’s more, everything you’re being told now suggests that
this wasn’t a onetime thing; it was another in a long line of
grandstanding stunts, which devalues the whole family thing even
further. But you know what?”
She met his eyes,
feeling somehow chastised yet relieved. “None of it matters worth a
damn, because knowing about the past doesn’t change who I am. I’m
not my mother or father, and I’m not Shandi. I’m me.”
“That’s right. And
you’re a strong, wonderful woman anyone should be proud to have as
a daughter. . . .”
If she hadn’t known
him so well, she would’ve assumed he’d finished his thought.
Because she did know him, though, she tipped her head. “And?”
Say it. Tell me
you’re proud to be with me, that there’s more here than just the
sex magic.
But instead, he rose
to his feet. “And I’m proud of you for the iceball stunt,
regardless of the property damage.” He lifted a shoulder. “It looks
like we both got what we wanted, doesn’t it?”
She tried to see past
his guarded expression, but couldn’t. Or maybe there wasn’t
anything more to see? For a moment, she was tempted to ask him
point-blank where he saw the two of them going, whether it was more
for him than magic and fringe benefits. But she didn’t dare. If
he’d been the same man as before, she might have, but he was
different now, more independent and far harder to read. And what if
he didn’t share her feelings? Skywatch was a small place, and her
running to the university wasn’t an option anymore. Not with her
talent starting to show itself. So instead of pushing him, or
revealing herself, she nodded and found a faint smile. “Yeah. We
got what we wanted.”
Something flashed
across his expression, there and gone too quickly for her to parse.
He said only, “Maybe I’ll see you later?”
Recognizing that
“later” had become their shorthand for “are we still on for sex?”
she nodded. “Yeah. See you later.” But her throat tightened on the
words. And when he was gone, she burrowed back into bed . . . and
pulled the covers over her head.
Lucius stalked back
to his cottage, telling himself he’d done the right thing. He’d
wanted to prod her into reconciling—or at least trying to
reconcile—with her winikin. What was
more, he’d managed to keep the conversation away from their
relationship, which had become a suddenly thorny problem, and in a
way he never would’ve anticipated.
He’d sensed the shift
in her the previous morning, had known when things had gone from
lust-only to tenderness, from “that feels good” to “what are you
feeling?” A year ago, maybe even a few months ago, that would’ve
had him doing cartwheels through the busted-up great room. Now,
though, he didn’t know what to do with it. Did he care about her?
Absolutely. But the more time he spent around the mated mage pairs,
and the more recent events had forced him to think about family
ties, the more he realized that in the past he’d done crushes and
affection, occasionally even loyalty, but not love.
He had loved his
family growing up, he supposed, in a love-but-not-like sort of way.
Or had that been coexistence rather than love? His older brothers
had tormented him, his father had cheered them on, his older
sisters had put bows in his hair, and his mother had pitted them
all against one another in a subtle battle of passive aggression he
hadn’t recognized as such until he was well away from the whole
mess. He’d escaped to UT, floundered a bit, then eventually found
his place with Anna. He’d leaned on her, idolized her, and thought
for a time that he loved her. But his feelings for her, like the
brief flashes of affection from his few lovers, which he’d taken
too far, too fast with scant encouragement, hadn’t been the sort of
bone-deep emotion that had spurred Vennie to sacrifice herself so
her husband and child might live, or that had embittered Shandi so
deeply that she’d carried the fear and resentment with her for
decades. He’d never felt that way. More, he didn’t think he wanted
to, because wasn’t it really another form of possession? He didn’t
want to have to think of someone else; he was just starting to
figure out how to think of himself.
That was why he’d
ducked Jade’s almost-offer just now. Always before, she had guarded
herself so carefully, protected herself so fiercely. The last thing
he wanted was to peel those layers back to find the woman within .
. . and realize he was incapable of letting himself be equally
vulnerable to her.
He wanted her. But he
didn’t want to be owned by her. And that was what love translated
to, wasn’t it? Ownership.
They could be
friends. They could be friends with benefits. They could even be
lovers. But he wasn’t interested in falling in love, not anymore.
And for a guy who had always thought he was someone who fell too
easily, that was a hell of a thing to figure out. Especially when
he and Jade were finally lovers. Things were changing too fast
around him, inside him, for him to make any sort of commitment. At
least, he hoped that was what had happened, because he hated to
think he’d been chasing something half his life, only to figure out
that once he had it, he didn’t really want it after
all.
“In a different
lifetime,” he murmured, but didn’t bother continuing, because in
another lifetime he and Jade never would have met. And it was this
lifetime that they needed to make matter, and not just for their
own sakes. Which was why, instead of turning around and heading
back to her room, as so much of him was tempted to do, he let
himself into his cottage and locked the door behind him, not so
much to keep anyone out, but as a symbol, to let himself know he
was staying there.
Everything was just
as he’d left it when the big boom from the mansion had interrupted
him: a garbage-bag tarp was spread in front of the TV, waiting for
him to man up and do what needed to be done. Sacrifice. There had to
be magic inside him. He wouldn’t have gotten into the library
without it, regardless of the sex or the new moon. It was in there
somewhere. He just had to get it out. The magi needed Kinich Ahau.
They needed the Triad. They needed more from him than he’d given
them so far.
Flipping on the TV,
he woke his laptop, which projected another of the images he’d been
studying. Similar to the one that had been on-screen the other
night, this one showed a scene from the ritual ball game of the
Maya, with masked, shielded players clustered around the ceremonial
rubber ball that symbolized the sun. He hit the “back” arrow a
couple of times, returning to the painting that had overseen his
and Jade’s barrier transitions. He stared at the glyphs coming out
of the musician’s conch-shell instrument, the ones that were
supposed to be gibberish, but that Jade thought were something
else.
“A blessing, huh?” He
didn’t see it, but she’d certainly proven herself with the ice
spell, so he’d give it a shot.
Seating himself
cross-legged on the plastic, so he wouldn’t ruin the rug or
upholstery, he palmed the butcher knife he’d lifted from the main
kitchen. It was solid in his hand, and far sharper than the steak
knife he’d used to offer himself to the makol almost exactly two years earlier. Turning his
right hand palm up, he set the knife along the gnarled scar that
followed his lifeline. Then he closed his fingers around the blade
in a fist and yanked the knife free of it. Cool steel burned, then
sang to pain as blood welled up, then dripped down. Taking a moment
to review the questions he meant to ask if—or rather when—he made it back in, he focused on the painting
and began to chant the nonsensical words formed by the musician’s
glyphs, trying different tones and variations, mixing up the order
of the symbols, all while seeking the power that had to be inside
him somewhere.
Nothing
happened.
In fact, nothing
happened for long, long into the night. Grimly, he kept going,
letting blood from different ceremonial spots on his body and
working every spell fragment he’d absorbed during his months at
Skywatch, knowing that he had failed at many things in his life,
but he couldn’t afford to fail now. Jade’s mother might have been
right about love being a key to winning the war; gods knew the magi
drew their powers from one another. But he knew damned well that in
this case, it wasn’t about love. It was about the magic. All he had
to do was find it.