Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
A n insistent knocking roused me from sleep, and I opened my eyes with a groan. Golden twilight streamed in through the gossamer curtains as always, making it impossible to tell the time.
Grumbling to myself, I padded across my bedchamber and tentatively opened the door.
Adriel loomed on the other side of the threshold, his usual scowl firmly in place. “Good. You’re up.”
I glared back. “Only because my insufferable jailer was pounding on my door.”
“Get dressed,” he growled with a jerk of his chin. “Your lesson with Gaeldric starts in ten minutes, and you don’t want to keep him waiting.”
I stared at him, taken aback. I didn’t know who Gaeldric was, and I didn’t care.
“Maybe I wasn’t clear —”
“Trust me. You were very clear.” Adriel’s expression turned stormy, and he let out a puff of exasperation. “But if you won’t allow Kaden to teach you to withstand mental invasion, then you’ll train with Gaeldric.”
“If I’m meant to train, shouldn’t I be allowed some breakfast?”
“Here.” Adriel thrust a grease-stained canvas sack under my nose, and I took it cautiously.
I wouldn’t have put it past the royal guard to serve me a rotten rat carcass for breakfast, but as I opened the bag and peered inside, I caught a whiff of something rich and succulent: salted pork and some stale-looking biscuits that looked as though I might chip a tooth on them.
“Delicious,” I quipped with a saccharine smile. I supposed if they couldn’t starve me outright, feeding me like the stablehand was the next best thing.
“You have nine minutes.”
Snapping the door shut in Adriel’s face, I plopped down on the floor and started wolfing down my breakfast. The biscuits were horribly dry and turned to crumbs in my hand, but I was so ravenous that I devoured every morsel, as well as the salty pork.
I took my time getting dressed and braiding my hair, and when I finally emerged from my chamber, Adriel was pacing the small landing like a caged wildcat.
He growled something that sounded like “about time” and led me down the stairs into the now familiar corridor that led to the training room.
But when he threw open the heavy doors and ushered me inside, I was shocked to find that I was not in the stuffy chamber filled with mats and training dummies, but a spacious classroom with tall arched windows that looked out on a grove of laurel trees.
A long table sat in the center of the room, and on the other side of it, a tall man in cream robes stood with his back to me.
I sucked in a gasp, looking around in disbelief, but the royal guard merely shrugged. “The House is magicked to serve the needs of its residents. Sometimes rooms . . . reconfigure themselves.”
Wrenching my jaw shut, I turned my attention to the man who had to be Gaeldric. He looked to be in his seventies, though that meant very little. The fae were practically immortal, and if he resided here in Adraeis, there was no way of guessing his age.
White-blond hair fell to his shoulders in untidy waves. Though he was tall and slight, a paunch hung over the leather belt that secured his robes, providing something of a shelf on which he rested his folded hands.
His face was heavily lined, and when he turned, he pierced me with a sharp pale-blue gaze that immediately reminded me of Julian, the cantankerous mortal shopkeeper.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” the man snapped. “We are short on time already, so we’d best get started.”
My gaze slid to Adriel, whose stony expression did little to hide the amusement dancing in his eyes.
“Lyra, this is Gaeldric,” the Morkahlf supplied. “Gaeldric is a witch of the Coranthe line.”
A Coranthe witch ? Shock and excitement bubbled in my chest, though it was quickly doused by the cold, assessing look the old man was giving me.
“Gaeldric, this is Lyra.”
“I surmised as much.”
Adriel hesitated. “She is half huntress, half witch . . . and your newest pupil.”
“That remains to be seen,” Gaeldric snapped, those blue eyes narrowing as he continued to look me over. “Not all can be taught.”
I swallowed, throat suddenly dry.
Living in the Quarter, I’d slain hundreds of vampires.
I’d killed ogres and fae — even the occasional werewolf.
When Kaden and I had ventured to the in-between, we’d been attacked by a horde of water-dwelling monsters that shared a hive mind.
And yet the old man still managed to send a shiver of anxiety down my spine as he continued to assess me.
“When you said I’d be training —” I hissed at Adriel.
The royal guard’s mouth twisted in a smirk. “I figured I’d never get you to come unless you thought you’d get to throw a dagger at someone.”
Gaeldric gave a loud sigh. “If that will be all . . .”
Adriel cleared his throat and nodded at the old witch, backing toward the door. And even though Kaden’s royal guard had been the bane of my existence since I’d awoken in the House of Perpetual Twilight, I suddenly didn’t want him to go.
As if he sensed my mounting dread, Adriel met my gaze and waggled his eyebrows before allowing the heavy doors to swing shut behind him.
“Now then,” said Gaeldric in a businesslike tone. “The Dark Prince tells me you are untrained but have experience using your magic.”
“Well, I . . .”
In truth, I’d only managed to summon my magic on a few occasions, which hardly seemed to qualify as “experience.”
“Well, what?” the witch prompted. “Do you, or do you not?”
“I’ve . . . only used my powers a handful of times,” I admitted. “Once to unlock a drawer that had something I needed inside, once to melt the bars of a cell, and once to conceal myself when I was under attack.”
I decided to leave out the instance where I’d hurtled a boy through a second-story window. That had happened when I was young, and my memory of the event was hazy.
Gaeldric gave a curt nod. “So you have successfully harnessed the power of intent to call your magic to you in times of great need.”
“I suppose.”
He tucked his hands behind his back and began to pace the length of the room. “You will learn that all magic is intent manifested. The fact that you are still untrained and have used your powers to actualize your desires says there may be hope for you.”
I raised my eyebrows. I got the feeling that the old man wasn’t the sort to offer encouragement, but I decided to take it as such.
“Don’t look so cheery,” Gaeldric chided.
“It will take more than great need to master your gifts. While desire and desperation are reliable wells of power, the results are often . . . imprecise. As you will soon learn, precision is everything when performing magic. It is the difference between a paper cut and a killing blow. Of conjuring a glass of water to quench your thirst and drowning yourself and everyone around you.”
I shuddered.
“Which is why they say the Coranthe language can take many lifetimes to master. It was only through true mastery that our forebears wove the intricate tapestry of runes that forms the veil between realms. If it weren’t for their precision, those who seek to harm mortal kind would have unraveled it many centuries ago. ”
So that was why none of the witches Semphrys had captured had managed to dismantle the veil.
“Do you know the difference between a common ward and the network of runes that forms the veil?” he asked.
I shook my head.
The old man let out an exasperated sigh. “Wards, like all magic, are created with intent, but they must be bound to a specific witch.”
My stomach roiled as I recalled the wards around Silas’s house — the ones he’d bound to Imogen’s life.
“Runes draw on the magic that is freely available, which is why your witchwood blade has retained its power long after the creator’s death. It is why the veil still stands centuries after it was woven.”
“But . . . how is it that I was able to draw on my magic without knowing any runes?”
“Ah-ha!” The old witch’s eyes glittered, and he tapped his temple with one long, gnarled finger. “That is the power of intent. The challenge lies in harnessing the magic around you with precision.”
Gaeldric resumed his pacing. “Like calls to like. When you first begin, it is easier to sense magic that is a match for your own. It is also easier to draw on in the Otherworld, since magic is more prevalent there. Or, at least, it was.”
Before the Ravaging.
“Even so, there is ample power available in the mortal world and here in Adraeis. You simply have to become attuned to it. Once you do, you can draw on it. Then you can learn how to imbue runes with that power. That is how you will hone your magic.”
At his words, I remembered the familiarity of the magic I’d sensed in the in-between — magic that had led me to Mankara’s text.
“But how is it that I can understand runes?” I asked. “I’ve never studied the Coranthe tongue.”
“How is it that a stray dog can understand another mongrel?” Gaeldric asked brusquely.
When I didn’t answer, he waved an impatient hand.
“As a witch of the Coranthe line, the language is in your blood. You can intuit the general meaning, though the intricacies of the language evade you. But it is not enough to understand runes, or even to create them. You must be able to imbue a rune with magic perfectly tailored to your desires. That is where true power lies.”
“How many witches have you trained?” I asked, a quiet anger rising within me.
When Kaden had first told me what I was, he’d said he thought he’d seen the last of the Coranthe line killed. He just hadn’t told me they’d died at the hands of his father.
Gaeldric looked flustered. “You would be the first.”
“And how many of us are left?”
“Same answer,” said the old man gruffly.
My stomach dropped as his words sank in.
I was the only witch of our line left? But how could that be true? Was he the witch Kaden had spoken of? The one Kaden had watched die?
Did that mean Gaeldric . . .
“Shall we begin, or would you care to check my references?” the old witch barked, tugging me out of my thoughts.