Chapter Ten
The chaos of duality. Sacred fire of the heavens and demonic fire of the depths. Burning eternal. Unwavering and pure. Unable to be smothered or unmade by the other. Both occupying sides of fate’s twisted coin. A summoning beyond magic itself. Too ancient to be given creed or command.
– Insidious Theory. Myths of the Deep , 1145
The rumours of Emrys Blackthorn being a madman might have been justified. I’d never seen anyone work with such intensity, which was evident in his notes. Half of them didn’t even make sense, comprising mostly symbols and fey shorthand he hadn’t bothered to translate.
No wonder the man hadn’t been seen much in the Council chambers. I doubted he’d had time. He’d travelled Elysior numerous times this year alone, to each corner and back again. I was exhausted just considering the different locations mentioned in his notes.
His passion was easy to understand on paper; numerous evidence bundles showed his attempts to defend fey accused of wild magic breaches or dark summonings in the midlands. He’d stopped seven fey cleansings this year alone. His facts and writings were just as unforgiving as his temperament.
It was no wonder William ran everywhere; being close to Blackthorn was like how I imagined the eye of a storm would be – one wrong step and he could easily drag you off course.
How a brilliant being such as Blackthorn had ended up in service to the Council worried me, as well as the fact he’d been a king’s mage, just as his father had been. Servants to a madman. Then again, Master Hale had also been in service to the same king.
I’d forgiven Hale without thought, perhaps childishly, the moment he’d promised to keep Alma safe. However, one good act didn’t eradicate a lifetime of wrongs.
My gaze drifted to where Alma lay curled up on top of a small stack of books I hadn’t gotten to yet. The ones I had managed to study were a mixture of dark-magic-caused illnesses that had gone untreated, violent malevolent spirit attacks or simple demonic torment caused by lesser fiends. The number, frequency and recentness of them worried me, considering the Council’s current denial that Verr and dark magic were even a threat. No, in the Council’s eyes, it was the fey who hungered for power and wished to undermine authority.
The darkness of the crimes reminded me of stories my father had told. Tales of monsters and Verr. Of the Old Gods and the Alder Kings, rulers of the endless dark. Ancient demons with no form. Nightmarish tales I should give little credence to, but again I was pulled back to my own history. When Kysillian Kings had ruled Elysior and the fey here, their greatest enemy were Verr, dark beings that wielded the darkest of magic and fed off the earth, giving fey no choice but to go to war and force such creatures deep beneath the earth. Over time Verr lost mortal form, becoming the dark magic they once wielded. Dark, demonic beasts made of smoke and curses that seeped from the earth.
The Kysillian Kings used their fire to heal the earth, molten-enchanted metal burning seals into the ground, making it impossible for such darkness to ever escape again.
But if a being indulged too fervently in dark magic, if they summoned too strongly, it could cause a weakness in the earth and such forsaken power could surge forth. Creatures created from such a summoning would corrupt the land, causing sickness and disease. Other dark beasts grew from the lack of earth magic left to defend the world and went hunting for flesh to eat.
The victims in Emrys’s files were all fey, the descriptions of their deaths brutal and relentless. It seemed the Verr beneath the earth still sought revenge, despite the Kysillian Kings who trapped them being nothing more than myth now.
A loud crash of glass breaking and a wail of alarm from beyond the study doors sent me to my feet. Alma jumped awake, skittering off the desk and scattering papers across the floor.
I rushed in the direction of the noise and into the hallway, seeing it had shifted once more, light spilling across the tiled floor as a maze of halls lay before me. In the mouth of one archway carved with dragons doing battle, trying to juggle books and jars under his arms with glass shattered at his feet, was William.
‘William?’ I asked, his bright hair in disarray, half of it tangled around his horns as he glanced up with flushed cheeks.
‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ He shook his head, gathering up the mess of glass with a simple enchantment, reforming the jar easily and adding it carefully to the stack in his arms.
‘Here. Let me help.’ I crossed the hall and took the most precariously stacked jars from him with an easy smile.
‘Is that a mouse?’ he asked, at the same moment I felt a small pressure on my shoulder.
I turned my head and there, perched on my shoulder, rubbing its ear with a small paw, was indeed a mouse, one with familiar green eyes.
‘Alma.’ I sighed, knowing I should be relieved she was changing once more, even if it wasn’t into the right being.
‘Can she transfigure any smaller?’ asked William, watching her with the same fascinated concern I was.
‘Don’t tempt her. I think she’s beyond the usual rules of transfiguration,’ I admitted, worried by the concept. Another reason why it was so hard to find tonics that repressed her changes. When I found one that worked, her magic found a way around it.
I just hoped she didn’t change into something so small I couldn’t find her.
‘I just need them in the workshop.’ He nodded in the direction of the open doorway, where sunlight poured in. I followed, Alma perched on my shoulder and clearly sharing in my curiosity as we entered a large space. The warmth of the air was the first thing that hit me. Then came the pungent scent of soil, the sweetness of enchanted flowers and the fragrance of so many plants. It was overwhelming.
The ceiling was stained glass, geometric shapes that drenched the room in multicoloured light. Rows and rows of plant boxes, some housing small forests that almost reached the glass ceiling, others barely shoots emerging from the dirt. A rusty watering can levitated over the boxes, showering whatever plant it deemed in need.
This wasn’t an ordinary greenhouse. The energy in the air was too potent, and my own magic flared with curiosity, heating the tips of my fingers as I ran them over the soil, feeling it practically vibrate with magic.
Taeformery. The art of earth magic, a far more refined form than the earth spells written about in Council books. Most earth-born fey possessed some power over that element, but I’d never seen something like this.
‘Earth manipulation.’ The words fell from my lips in a mixture of amazement and confusion.
‘Not the most impressive of talents.’ William shrugged, running a hand through his hair to try and smooth it.
‘It depends how you use it,’ I corrected, never having seen a spellcasting chamber like this. Every plant in here created by a summoning, grown with spells and given life by his patience.
‘Emrys said these study chambers belonged to his mother. Nothing was alive when I arrived.’ William grinned, stuffing his hands into his muddy apron pocket.
‘She studied Taeformery?’ I asked. Witches didn’t usually waste their time on earth magic – the earth could do us little damage after all. They were more interested in tempting the dark to increase their own hold on magic than growing items to assist in spells and healing.
‘No. She mostly studied the poisons from rare plants,’ he admitted with a worried smile, clearly not knowing all the facts about Emrys’s mother either.
I returned my attention to the boxes, considering the wealth of greenery each contained. Magic that would have been punished outside these walls, fey secrets Emrys had protected.
I rubbed the leaves of a longmore plant, lifting it to my nose to smell the bitter scent. Unable to stop my mind from wandering back to William’s words. Earth manipulation wasn’t revered as much as it should be.
Emrys had seen worth in William’s gift, one others would have dismissed. There where plants here that some would argue should be extinct and, amongst the oddities, the ash-coloured leaves of a plant I had only seen once.
‘Is that thaddeus root?’ I asked. ‘It’s supposed to be extinct.’
‘Yes,’ William said with a grin. ‘Emrys asked me to grow it.’ William grinned.
I’d seen it around Master Hale’s office. One seed was able to detect poison in any liquid by turning it black. Master Hale was always secretive about where he acquired it – just on one of his travels, he’d said. It was a plant I’d tried to find myself and failed, because it had died out long ago. And yet here it was.
Had Emrys had William grow it for him?
‘Why?’ I pressed gently.
‘Like most things involving Emrys, it’s a mystery. I was just happy to be able to study it,’ he carried on, clearly not sensing my suspicion. More worries I didn’t need.
I sighed, realising I should get back to my own studies. If only the pile of papers he’d given me were as easy to understand as the plant.
Seeming to sense my exhaustion, William pushed himself up to perch on the edge of the workbench. ‘What cases are bothering you the most?’
‘The recent killings in the village of Fremby,’ I told him. Not the most pleasant of reading material, but I needed to accept the cruelty of this world if I was to stand any chance of understanding it.
He nodded. ‘It was awful. Most were all killed in the same manner.’
The sketches of each victim had been highly detailed. A dark fiend had terrorised most of the village. The villagers had believed it was a thief slitting throats and robbing what little coin they could find.
All the victims had a laceration to the throat, no defensive wounds and were all found to have been robbed. A dark fiend that fed on blood and liked to collect shiny objects. Dismissed by the Council as mortal evil.
‘What caused the surge in dark activity?’ I asked. The cause hadn’t been mentioned in the paper. Just the suffering of those who didn’t make it.
‘A businessman was trying to mine close by, digging too deeply into cursed earth. The rock in that part of Elysior contains various gems. His greed was easy enough for whatever dark energy remained to feed off.’
Women and children. Innocent beings murdered for nothing but greed – one of the callings of the dark. Its magic was easy to learn … even easier to lose control of.
‘My mother use to tell me about the danger of the occult and stories of the Verr. I never truly believed such things were possible.’ William spoke softly as he ran his fingers through the soil, breaking up the clumps.
‘Where is she now?’ My curiosity was probably rude, but I wanted to know more about him. How he ended up here under Blackthorn’s care.
‘Dead …’
‘I’m sorry.’ It seemed all our stories were too familiar, especially after the wars. I didn’t want that grief for William, or for any of us, and yet it always found us in the end.
He shrugged, rubbing his hands together as crumbs of dirt dropped to the tiled floor. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘How did you meet Emrys?’ Perhaps I should have kept my questions to myself, but I felt an ease speaking to another fey, finally unwatched.
‘My father tried to sell me on the east roads to one of the pleasure markets, deeming me queer enough to get a profit,’ he continued in a horrifyingly conversational tone. ‘I was six then.’
My magic surged at the mere mention of those roads, my hands clutching the stool beneath me, wood creaking in my grip. Alma rushed down my arm to slip into my dress pocket.
The east roads were a prolific slave route, where most menageries’ victims were recruited, and lords got cheap servants. The same roads I assumed Alma had been sold on, and where I would have been too if Master Hale hadn’t taken me in.
‘Emrys happened to be working a case in town when I escaped,’ he continued, unaware of my internal struggle, or just how closely linked we could all be. ‘He was about to leave. I still don’t know what made him stop.’ There was a sad amusement in his smile, a distance in his gaze as I watched him relive it.
‘I’m sorry, William.’ I was – sorrier than he could ever know, that any of it had happened at all.
‘I’ve never given much credence to the notion of fate or ancestral guidance, but I can’t deny someone was looking out for me that day.’ He smiled weakly, pulling in a deep breath before pushing away from the table. ‘I should go and start on dinner.’
There was a loneliness about this boy. One that made me instantly annoyed with Emrys for leaving him behind, but also grateful to him for taking him in and protecting him from the cruelty of the world.
‘I can help.’ I reached into my bag, rummaging until I was elbow deep in my things before pulling out a small notepad filled with a few pages of recipes my father had taught me. ‘We can work on one of these together.’ I held out the offering to him, suddenly anxious he wouldn’t want such a troublesome friend as me.
‘Are you sure?’ He frowned but didn’t hide the excitement in his eyes. ‘I thought you’d want to get to the Institute to check over the records?’
The key Master Hale had given me felt like a dead weight where it still rested in my pocket. That strange unease from I’d felt the last time I’d been in the hallway slipped over my skin before I shook it away.
‘I need some time away from occult papers, and it’s been a very long time since I was in a kitchen,’ I said by way of explanation. ‘Maybe tomorrow is the day for the Institute.’
Coward. The word came hissed into the back of my mind and for once I couldn’t shake it away.
‘If the house wants to let you go,’ William warned playfully. ‘It has a habit of messing up plans.’
I had noticed, hearing the constant creaking groans of the wood, almost passing comment.
‘Let’s get Alma some cheese,’ he offered cheerily, making her appear from my pocket with a squeak and scurry up my arm.
‘Emrys taught me how to make bread, but everything else is a mystery to me,’ William continued with a grin, extending his arm to guide me to the kitchen.