Chapter 16
Sixteen
Avalon
It wasn’t until I was settled into Hayle’s childhood bedroom that I remembered the satchel given to us by the Librarian underneath Fortaare. They’d put it in Hayle’s rooms with the rest of our stuff that had come back to Hamor with his brothers.
We’d all been given separate rooms, except me and Hayle.
I guess they knew Hayle would end up in my bed, no matter where I was, so why make more work?
Despite being given separate rooms, we were all in Hayle’s small sitting room, perched on every surface, with the exception of Iker and Shay, both of whom had retired to their own rooms.
Surprisingly, Zier was still here, writing letters at Hayle’s desk by the window. Vox was lying across the small leather couch, and Lierick was on the floor in front of him, his head resting back on Vox’s stomach.
He looked haunted, but I trusted that Baron Hanovan would do the right thing by his son. If not, Lierick could join the rest of us misfits, I guess.
Hayle was in the shower, and I was tempted to join him, but I could wait. Otherwise, we’d be in there for an hour, and no one else would be getting clean anytime soon.
Standing, I went over to our bags and found the leather book bag among the rest of our stuff. I carried it over and sat on the end of the couch at Vox’s feet. Not happy with the distance, Vox used his air to float me down until I was sitting between his thighs.
“I forgot about those,” he said guiltily, but I couldn’t blame him. It had been a day.
“Better late than never.” I carefully pulled out the package, which was completely wrapped in oilskins to keep everything dry.
Unwrapping the bindings, I found two books inside.
No note. No nothing. They were both incredibly old, and I couldn’t really believe that the Librarian had let them leave the library.
The first book was on tals and even had one embedded in the cover.
It wasn’t a tal I recognized, though I wasn’t an expert.
Opening the cover, I noted that it was handwritten.
Most of it was in the High Language, which I definitely couldn’t read, but it seemed to be a bastardized version between that and the common vernacular we used now. Someone’s lifework, clearly.
Passing it to Lierick—since he’d have a better chance at understanding it than I would—I unwrapped the next one. It was a dark brown leather journal, the letters I.V. in gilt embossing on the front.
“I.V.? Surely it isn’t…” Lierick started, but as soon as I opened it, I knew it was.
Ivan Vylan. The First Line Heir who’d murdered the Second Line.
Flicking through the pages, I picked up places and people who were written in the history books back at Boellium, who’d been no more than characters mentioned in our History of Ebrus lectures, or in our Battle Strategy seminars.
It was odd to think that at some point, this near-mythical character from Ebrus’s history had written this very book.
I flicked through the pages gently. There were mentions of ordinary things: the rainfall, meetings with his father, his younger brother taking his first steps. All very mundane. There was a table with costs of what looked like an insane party, including suppliers and a guest list.
Moving my finger down a column, I paused over names I recognized. Oris Hanovan. Ellanora Halhed. I looked at the date. This was before the midsummer party that Lierick had read about in Oris’s journal. Thank the Goddess people back then had been great journal-keepers.
My eyes caught on something.
I found a tome in the library, much to the Librarian’s disgruntlement, that I know is important.
It’s written in High, which makes me glad that I didn’t fall asleep in every one of Master Frukan’s lessons.
It lists a method of making tals that I hadn’t ever considered, and how to find already powerful objects and imbue them with the magic needed to direct their power.
I know there would be something down in the dusty old tombs beneath the Hall of Ebrus that would have enough power for me to see if his writings are true, or just the drivel of a madman.
I skipped a few more pages. My heart was beating faster, like some part of me knew this was important.
It worked. Goddess, it worked. I’ve deciphered most of the tome now, even smuggling the book to my rooms to make notes. The Librarian scares me, if I’m honest. She seems to always know everything. How is that not creepy?
I’ve found the perfect object to create my masterpiece with. I’m going to call it the tal of Ebretha, because it is power sent from the very Goddess herself.
The midsummer party will ensure it becomes charged enough that the magic will hold, and I’ve invited every single Heir in Ebrus. It will be the best party of the century, and it will charge the tal that I will have created perfectly.
The tal of Ebretha? I’d never heard of such a thing.
Most tals were never more than little hunks of metal imbued with a sliver of power.
Once upon a time, larger materials could be imbued as talismans, or with magic that could have a single purpose and not have to be sustained, like the Dome of Boellium, and the glass of the atrium.
But most of the large objects we imbued with magic now had to be updated repeatedly.
I kept reading. There had to be more on what he was creating beneath the Hall of Ebrus.
The midsummer party was as successful as usual, maybe even more so, and the amount of magic being flung around was greater than I could’ve expected. Hanovan was there, being a stick in the mud as always, but it was fun to watch him get shut down by the most gorgeous woman in the room.
I’d heard of Ellanora Halhed from the Ninth Line, of course.
She had both beauty and power. It was a pity she was also just a little bit unnerving, or maybe that adds to her appeal.
When I introduced myself, she didn’t fall to her knees like most of the Lower Lines.
Instead, she just stared at me with that unnerving stare, and told me to abandon my current course of action.
It was a new way to get rejected, but I was amused, purely for the novelty of the dismissal. Oh well, soon enough she’ll come crawling to me, begging to be mine. Father will see my worth, and then I’ll overthrow the old bastard.
“Guys, this is bad. I don’t know what it is, but it’s bad,” I told everyone, and Hayle appeared from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist.
He frowned, looking for the source of my panic. “What’s wrong, Avie?”
“I found the real reason for the rift between the Lines,” I told him.
Lierick hissed out a breath. “It’s worse than that,” he breathed, looking pale.
He held out the book on tals to me, and in the familiar handwriting of Ivan Vylan, was a sketched page of notes.
In the middle was a small statue of Ebretha, with chaotic scrawl around it.
“I’ve discovered why the magic of the Lower Lines is disappearing. ”
Beneath the rough sketch of Ebretha was one word.
Siphon.
Vox was now sitting up on his elbows, his eyes moving over the pages rapidly, like if his eyeballs covered every square inch, it would suddenly make sense. Hayle looked between both books, frowning.
“Spell it out for me.”
I pointed to the paragraph in the book on my lap. “Ivan was mad at his dad—”
“How original,” Vox muttered.
I rolled my eyes. “Because Ivan only possessed three of the four elements, making him significantly weaker than his father. But Ivan seemed to have a plan, and if the next few centuries were anything to go by, the plan worked.”
“And the plan was…?” Hayle prompted.
It was Lierick who answered, holding up his own book.
“To create a tal so powerful, it would siphon the magic from the outer rims of Ebrus back toward itself, then distribute it to those of the First Line.” He pointed to the page with all of Ivan’s notes.
“See here? It’s creating a well to store the magic of Ebrus here, below the Hall in Fortaare, then creating a vacuum so powerful, it pulls the magic into this central well. ”
There was a picture of Ebrus, roughly sketched below, as well as a projected range. It reached well past the shores of Ebrus, and I wondered what other lands were being suctioned of their magic by this unholy talisman.
Lierick continued. “Oris Hanovan knew. That was what he was talking about in his diaries.”
Zier, who I hadn’t seen move closer, shook his head. “He can’t have known it would be this catastrophic.”
“Or maybe he did, and that was the real reason for the dispute between the Lines. All carefully wrapped up in some jilted lover fairytale,” Vox said softly, and I shook my head.
How could anyone rob the other Lines of their magic, and murder an entire Line to keep it a secret? The answer was obvious, and as old as time itself.
Power.