Lightgiver (14 page)

“I thought you said that wouldn’t happen anymore.”

“I said it would happen less, but that’s not the point. I just have more blood of the afur than you. My flesh can’t contain it.”

“A clever lie,” she said. “It comes so easily to you. You must’ve been using it for a long time.”

Jez almost denied it, but the deadpan look on Mirel’s face told him it would do no good. He let out a breath. “Nearly two years now.”

“I take it the masters don’t know?”

“Besis does. None of the others do, though.”

“And you do not wish them to?”

Jez looked over his shoulder. Fina would probably be able to hear the answer, but there was nothing to do about that. “No.”

“Very well. I will respect your wishes.”

Master Fina was barely breathing heavily as he came up to them. Some of his students were a little red-faced from the exertion, but none seemed injured. Fina himself bounced up and down like a six-year-old boy who’d just gotten a new toy.

“By the seven, I’ve never seen anything like that. That was a void beast.”

“A small one,” Mirel said.

“Small?” Osmund asked.

Mirel nodded. “You don’t want to see a large one. There are those who consider void beasts among the most terrible creatures ever to exist. They’re not far wrong.”

Jez took a deep breath, but it just confirmed his suspicions. He hadn’t smelled a demonic presence during the fight. Now, he just caught the verdant scent common to the district of healing, but there was no hint of sulfur.

“They’re not demons,” Jez said.

“No, they are...” She pursed her lips. “It’s difficult to explain. Your language doesn’t have the right words. At the beginning of the universe, creation was given shape and form, but you can’t shape something without moving at least a part of it away from where it was. The void beasts come from the places where creation was removed.”

Jez just stared at her. Linala appeared from around a corner. She breathed quickly, and her face was a little flushed, but other than that, Jez could see no sign that she had just run across the city. Horgar showed up a second later, his heavy steps thunking on the street. The other masters arrived shortly afterward.

“I’m pretty sure your explanation doesn’t make sense,” Jez said.

“No, it doesn’t, but it’s as close to making sense as I can get. They’re not a concept meant for this world.”

“What happened?” Linala asked. “How did it get here?”

Mirel’s robes faded to a more mundane yellow, and her wings vanished as she took on the guise of an ordinary human. “You were right, mortal. The barrier is too weak. We could try again, but we might end up attracting something worse.” She closed her eyes for a second. “The barrier is now paper thin.”

Linala nodded and turned to the other masters as they neared. “Horgar, I need you to send a message to all the students we have staying in Tarcai and Hiranta. There is to be no summoning whatsoever, on pain of expulsion. We’ll have to cancel all summoning and binding classes next term. I hate to do that, but we’ve no choice if we want to prevent something like this from happening again.”

“There is, perhaps, one more thing we can try,” Mirel said.

“What’s that?”

“Going to the library itself.”

“I already tried that,” Jez said. “You said you couldn’t help me find it.”

“That was before the barrier thinned.” She eyed Jez. “And before I learned just how powerful you are.”

“Won’t that damage the barrier just as much as a summoning?” Jez asked.

“For a summoning, you open what is basically a hole in the barrier and send out a call. It is open for as long as it takes for the creature to come through. Leaving this world only opens the barrier long enough for the traveler to go through. The damage is minimal.”

“Okay,” Jez said, “but how do I find it? Last time, the closest I came was a memory Enki gave me.”

“You just need more time there,” she said. “Between would eventually shape itself to your desires.”

“I can’t spend more time there. It tears me apart. Besis used a ward to help me last time, but even that unraveled quickly.”

“Because it was of this world. You need a ward formed of things of that world.”

“But Between isn’t a world.”

Mirel gave him a half smile. “You need a ward that is of Between then.”

“I didn’t think there was anything of Between,” Jez said. “Isn’t that kind of the point? Between is nothing.”

She waved a hand toward the central spire. “Where did you think the memory shadows you keep beneath your tower come from?”

“The memory shadows?”

“Creatures of neither darkness nor light but of a mix of the two. Where else would such a creature come from if not Between?”

Jez looked at Linala, but she only shrugged. He returned his attention to Mirel. “Fine, but how does that help us form a ward?”

“Take the shadows and shape them.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

She raised an eyebrow. “With your will, of course. From what you’ve told me, you’ve already done a little of that.”

Jez shook his head. “No, I’m pretty sure that’s something I would remember.”

She smirked. “How do you think you find knowledge when you immerse yourself in them? Your will gives them shape and forces them to grant the knowledge you seek.”

“Okay, but that still doesn’t tell me how to make a ward from them.”

Mirel rolled her eyes and let out a long breath, a gesture that was obviously for show since, like the pharim they came from, afur didn’t breathe. She walked up to Jez and placed a finger on his forehead. For a second, his entire body felt like it was on fire. When the sensation passed, his mind swam with thoughts. He had to lean on a nearby building and was surprised when he saw someone staring back from within the wall. It took him a few seconds to recognize it was his own reflection in the obsidian. He felt like he had when Ziary had given him the knowledge of getting Between, but this was far simpler, and he knew he would have no trouble retaining this. It would be so easy to shape the shadows that he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.

“I can do it,” Jez said. “I can protect us Between.”

“But how do we get there?” Linala asked. “Unless you want Ziary to give you the knowledge again and have us wait four days for you to wake up.”

Jez closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was more of the knowledge Mirel had given him or if his own senses had grown more acute. Somehow, he could feel the mutable nature of Between. The barrier was so thin he could practically see through it. It would only take a minor effort to pierce it. Jez shook his head.

“No, I can take us there now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Linala spent half an hour in the central spire before she returned to the summoning house with six of the black glass spheres. By then, Jez was done with his circle, one halfway between a summoning and a binding. Under ordinary circumstances, the conflicting purposes would’ve stopped the ritual from working, but the thin barrier allowed things that would’ve otherwise been impossible. Even still, he wasn’t sure how many he could take with him.

Linala stopped in front of him and met his eyes. “Are you sure about this, Jezreel? These beings are incredibly dangerous.”

“I’ve dealt with dangerous things before, Master.”

“But not against something so able to invade your mind.”

Jez gave her a small nod. “I’ll be careful.”

She dropped them into his hand. Though they looked like they were made of obsidian, they didn’t clink when they impacted each other. They were completely black, but when he looked into them, he swore he could see faces in the glass. One of them stared at him, and his mind flooded with images of fire and war. Demons surrounded him, and he extended his hand to call his sword. He jumped when someone touched his shoulder. He blinked, and the vision vanished. He looked up to see Linala.

“Don’t do that.”

He nodded. “How long will they be like this?”

“A day or so. We have no way to bind them to a physical form for any longer than that.”

“Who should go?”

“Myself,” Linala said. “Besis and Fina.” She glanced at Mirel, and the limaph nodded.

“And me,” Osmund said.

Linala shook her head. “I don’t think...”

“Me too.”

The air rippled, and Lina appeared. Jez smiled. “I wondered if you would show yourself.”

“You knew?”

Jez rolled his eyes. “Lina, I’ve been around your illusions for almost a year. Of course I knew.”

“Really?”

He laughed. “No, but we just fought a huge otherworldly monster. Where else would you be?”

She glared at him, but he laughed again. Linala cleared her throat. “Regardless of Miss Varindatter’s indiscretion, this isn’t a situation for students. I would even leave Jezreel behind if we could.”

Jez tried not to glare. “They’re still going, though.”

“What?”

“I’m taking them.”

“You can’t.”

Jez shrugged. “Then, go without me.”

“Jezreel...”

“I’m the one who’s been looking for Sharim while you all thought I was overreacting. They helped me.”

“That may be but...”

She stopped when Besis chuckled. She glared at him, but he shrugged. “You know the law. The knowledge a mage has is theirs alone. If this is how he’s determined to use it, we have no right to stop him.”

“But he’s just a child. That law only applies to full mages.”

“If you want, we can go over the list of what this ‘child’ has accomplished. In most matters, I will regard him as a student, but when something like this happens, I’ve learned its best to either help or stay out of his way.”

Jez inclined his head toward the protection master. “Six aside from me then? I’ll try. Everyone get close.”

Linala looked like she would argue but she set her jaw and moved in close along with everyone else. Jez squeezed his fingers, and he felt the sphere crack in his hand. Tendrils of inky smoke rose up, but he surrounded them in his thoughts. They writhed, threatening to slip away, but he took the image of a cage and forced it onto the shadows. The smoke screamed in his mind, and though it should’ve been a struggle to maintain his concentration, the psychic attack broke against his mind like waves crashing against the shore. Hazy bars formed around them.

His consciousness reached out and touched the minds of those nearby. He sent power into the circle and was barely aware of the runes illuminating. The barrier parted, and Jez tried to sweep his companions into Between, but he felt resistance. Something was standing in the way, preventing him from finding them. He found Mirel easily enough, and though Osmund and Lina seemed to be hidden from him, he knew them well enough to locate them. The masters, however, felt hazy and indistinct. They slipped through his grasp as the rest of them plunged into Between.

CHAPTER THIRTY

The substance of Between rushed at them, but Jez’s ward turned it aside. They were in a cage with bars seeming to be made of some dark material. No longer the vague smoky form that had existed in the mortal realm, here the cage was solid. It was real in a place normally devoid of reality, and without knowing how he knew, he was certain that here, the form he’d forced the shadows into could last for eternity. Osmund and Lina lay unconscious on the ground, and Mirel stood next to him, though he didn’t feel the need to maintain any of them. She stared at the students on a floor made of dark bars.

“What happened?” Jez’s voice echoed for several seconds.

“You lost your grip on the others,” Mirel said. She tapped the downed Osmund with her foot. “These two were lucky to make it here alive. You should’ve released them when you first had trouble gripping them.”

He knelt down next to Lina and touched her throat. There was a steady pulse.

“They’re alive,” Jez said.

Mirel nodded. “Just unconscious.”

He looked up at her. “Why didn’t that happen to you?”

Mirel shrugged. “I’m not of the mortal realm.”

Jez waited for further explanation, but there was none, so he started gently shaking Lina. After a few seconds, she groaned and opened her eyes. She sat up and gasped as she looked around.

“Where are we?” Her eyes went wide at the echoing.

Jez started trying to wake Osmund. “We’re Between.”

She pursed her lips. “You know, I wasn’t sure I believed you when you told me about this place.”

“Between is not a place,” Mirel said.

Lina rolled her eyes. “I know that, but there’s not exactly a convenient way to refer to it.”

“It is Between.”

Lina sighed and looked at Osmund. “Will he be okay?”

“No,” Osmund said without lifting his head off the ground. “
He’s
mad because Jez’s plans always seem to end with him on the ground, and
he’s
trying to decide how badly he’s going to hurt Jez.”

“He’ll be fine,” Jez said. “He’s referring to himself in the third person, and that’s not a sign of mental stability, but that’s nothing new.”

Osmund lifted his head and glared at Jez. “You know you’re not funny, right?” He picked himself up and looked around. “Well, this is familiar.”