Chapter 14 Elowen #2
During the day, sunlight floods every corridor and turns the whole place golden but at night everything is shadows and silver.
I mount the broad marble staircase to the library, lifting the hem of my robe so it won’t brush the steps.
The banister is carved with curling leaves and tiny birds in flight, and cool ivy twines along it in a way no gardener ever entirely planned.
By the time I reach the top, my heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat. I'm finally here!
The library doors stand half open and beyond them lies the finest room in the whole temple. Even now, with no lamps lit and the shelves lost half in shadow, it takes my breath away. The Priestess-Sisters care more for knowledge than for comfort anywhere else, and it shows here.
The ceilings arch high overhead, painted in faded greens and golds with scenes of forests and rivers and animals hidden among curling branches.
Tall windows line the outer wall, their panes thrown open to let in the night air, which smells of damp leaves and summer earth.
The floor is not stone here but a deep carpet of living moss–cool and springy underfoot and threaded with tiny pale flowers that open only after dark.
The shelves rise in long graceful rows, packed with scrolls in lacquered cases, leather-bound books, rolled parchments tied in ribbon, and tablets of bark etched with old spells.
This is the room I love best in all the temple–this is where I come to breathe.
Tonight it feels like a place I am betraying.
Guilt and shame rise in me but the incessant throbbing between my legs drives me on. If I don’t find the Time Weaving spell and go back in time to reverse this curse, I’m going to end up just like Mirabella and the rest.
I’d rather be dead.
So betrayal or not, I must go on.
My gaze goes at once to the center of the room, where the Forbidden Grimoire rests on its own carved stand of white oak.
The book is enormous, bound in dark green leather so old it has gone almost black.
Strange silver clasps hold it shut and faint symbols glimmer across the cover like dew lit by moonlight.
Around it shimmers the alarm ward—a perfect, translucent bubble cast in rainbow hues. It shifts and glows softly, throwing glimmers of pink and blue and gold spell-light over the moss floor.
I step up to the book and stop at the edge of the alarm ward and swallow hard.
The alarm spell is not there to be subtle.
If the Grimoire is opened without permission, the whole temple will know within moments.
The Sisters might pretend gentleness in some matters, but not where forbidden magic is concerned.
Time weaving, especially, is the kind of craft they would sooner burn from the page than let a young acolyte play with.
I flex my fingers at my sides and try to calm my breathing.
My magic isn’t strong—not compared to the Sisters.
I know enough to tend plants, coax vines where they ought to grow, strengthen seedlings, and sense the shape of older workings.
I have a few cantrips…a few prayers that are answered if the Goddess is willing.
But lately…lately my magic has felt different–stronger somehow. It’s as though something inside me is stretching awake.
I only hope it’s strong enough to pull off what I’m going to try.
Closing my eyes, I whisper a quick prayer under my breath.
It ought to comfort me, but instead guilt stings me like an angry bee.
I am not at all certain the Goddess is listening to me anymore.
Not after Theron. Not after the sounds I made in his arms, and the way I came apart for him like a shameless thing as he touched me.
The memory makes me feel hot and cold all over, but I try to push it away. I can’t be thinking about that–not now. Not when I have to concentrate.
I open my eyes, take a steadying breath, and lift both hands toward the shimmering bubble.
The silence spell is small whenever I practice it—just enough to muffle the sound of my own steps or quiet a squeaking hinge.
But tonight I have to make it large–larger than the shimmering bubble of magic that encloses the Forbidden Grimoire and strong enough to hold while I read and memorize the spell.
I wet my lips and whisper the cantrip:
“Hush now, wind–hush each sound,
Let silence spread on sacred ground.
Make still the cry, make soft the air,
Till not a whisper lingers there.”
At once I feel the magic leaving me.
It always comes as a surprise—that first rush.
Like cool water pouring through opened gates.
It flows from somewhere deep inside my chest and down my arms, out through my hands and into the space before me.
I can almost see it–a trembling veil spreading outward in a wide, clear sphere.
The tiny hairs at the back of my neck raise and the moss at my feet seems to shiver.
The silence bubble expands slowly, straining as it meets the magic ward around the Grimoire. I grit my teeth and push harder. More power streams out of me—more than I’ve ever called before. It feels like drawing water from a spring with my bare hands and trying not to let any spill.
For one awful moment I think it won’t work. Then the silence bubble swells past the rainbow ward, engulfing it completely.
My knees go weak with relief–I did it!
But holding it there is another matter.
The magic trembles, quivering at the edges. Sweat breaks out at the back of my neck. I can feel every inch of the spell…every place where it might thin if my concentration slips. I don’t know how long I can keep it going. A minute? Two?
It will have to be enough.
I step forward quickly and unlatch the silver clasps. The Grimoire resists for just a moment, as though it does not want to be opened by me. Then the cover lifts and the rainbow ward bursts with a soft pop.
The alarm begins at once.
It is not a bell, as I once imagined, but a woman’s voice—loud and sharp and outraged. Even muted by the silence spell, it startles me so badly I nearly drop the cover.
“Unclean hands profane this page!
Wake, oh temple—mark outrage!
Guard the word and seal the lore!
Bar the thief at wisdom’s door!”
The voice goes on and on in a furious chant, but it cannot escape the silence bubble. Instead it seems to batter at my ears from inside my own head. I flinch and glance nervously toward the door, though I know the spell is holding—for now.
“Hush,” I hiss at it, and hurry to turn the pages.
The Grimoire smells of old leather, herbs long since turned to dust, and something stranger underneath—something slightly metallic–like rain falling on iron.
The pages are thick as petals and edged in silver.
Every turn of one feels impossibly loud to me, though I know the silence spell is swallowing the sound.
As I turn the pages, I see there are spells here I have never even dreamed of.
The first pages I pass are marked with titles in elaborate script, each one more tempting than the last. The Verdant Gate of Summer Crossing. The Binding of Moonroots Beneath Winter Soil. The Lantern Rite of the Sleepless Grove.
I want to stop and read them all—to know what they do, what secret doors they open, what power might be hidden in the curling lines of ink.
On another page I glimpse The Thousand-Petal Veil, which sounds like either a blessing or a disaster, and The Calling of Rain to a Thirsting Orchard, which I know the farmers beyond the village would pay dearly to learn.
But I don’t have time for any of them. I have to keep looking.
The alarm voice is still chanting in the bubble around me, and my silence spell trembles like an overtaxed muscle. I flip pages faster, searching desperately.
At last I find it.
The title alone sends a chill over my skin–The Weaving Back of Hours.
My pulse jumps. This is it. This has to be it.
I bend over the page, forcing myself to read quickly even while the alarm shrieks its muffled rhyme behind me. The letters swim for a moment, then settle into place.
The spell promises exactly what I hoped. It can send the caster—or another, if properly bound by blood and intention—back to any chosen moment in the recent past. Hours…days…weeks. Longer, if the magic is exceptionally strong and the working is perfectly done.
Hope fills me at first. But then I keep reading…and my heart sinks.
I force myself to keep reading, even as dread begins to pool cold and heavy in my stomach.
The spell is not simple—not even close. It isn’t just words spoken over a candle or a circle drawn in chalk.
It’s a weaving, just as the title says—a binding together of all four elements into a single current strong enough to pull time itself backward.
And each element can only be gathered by the one who intends to cast it.
I slow, my eyes going back over that line again.
Not given…not gifted…not taken by another’s hand but gathered–by me. The spell won’t work unless I get all these elements myself. All right, so what do I need? My fingers tighten on the edge of the page as I keep reading to find out what I must gather from each element.
Air is first—a feather from the wing of an Emperor Hawk.
The great sky hunters nest only in the jagged peaks of the Northern mountains, where the air is thin and the winds are strong enough to tear a person from the rock.
The feather cannot be found or traded for.
It must be taken from the nest itself…by the hand of the one who seeks it.
I swallow hard. The Northern mountains are said to be impassable. It feels impossible and this is only the first element!
Still, I keep reading.
Water is next—a drop drawn from the Sacred River of the East. But not just any water–it must be taken from the center of the current, where the river runs deepest and strongest, and only after the one who gathers it has spoken a truth that breaks their own heart.
I pause there, my breath catching in my throat. A truth that breaks your own heart…For some reason, that part frightens me more than the mountains. For one thing, I can barely swim and for another, there are some things I don’t want to bring up.
I force my gaze down the page. I have to learn the whole spell before my meager magic gives out.
Next, the element of Fire—I need a living coal that never dies, taken from the hand of a Fire Demon that dwells in the Southern wastelands.
It’s a barren place where nothing grows and no sane person dares to travel.
The coal must still burn when it is claimed, alive with heat and fury, or it will not answer the call of the spell.
I stare at that for a long moment, my mouth going dry. A Fire Demon? How in the world am I going to manage that? As if climbing impossible mountains and wading into sacred rivers wasn’t enough.
My eyes move to the final requirement.
For Earth I must find a jewel buried beneath the biggest root of the oldest Grandfather Tree in the Western wilds.
An ancient place where the land itself is said to remember the first breath of the world.
The jewel must be unearthed by hand, without tool or blade, or it will crumble to dust before it can be used.
I take a deep breath. Four elements. Four impossible tasks.
And every one of them must be done by me.
How is this even possible?
A faint, almost hysterical laugh rises in my throat, but I swallow it down. What was I thinking? I can barely hold a silence spell together for more than a few minutes and I thought I could work a weaving strong enough to bend time?
This is madness. And yet…I don’t look away.
As I stare down at the page, something shifts in the air above the Grimoire. A shimmer—faint at first, like heat rising from stone—and then growing stronger. Four shapes begin to form, hovering just above the open pages.
They solidify slowly into crystal vessels–each one round and smooth and no larger than my fist–stoppered with a small cork that glows faintly with magic.
I reach for them without thinking. The Grimoire is giving them to me for a reason–probably because I read the spell and its requirements.
The moment my fingers brush the nearest one, all four of the crystal vessels vanish.
I gasp softly, my hand closing on empty air—but they aren’t gone. I can feel them somehow, not in my grasp but close…as though they’ve settled just beyond sight and are waiting.
Waiting to be filled with all the impossible elements I’m supposed to collect.
A strange certainty settles over me then, quiet but absolute. If I complete the tasks—if I gather the elements—they will return. They’re attached to me now.
My heart begins to beat faster again, something sharp and dangerous flickering to life in my chest–hope. The Grimoire seems to think I can do this. Otherwise, why would it offer me the vessels needed to store the elements?
But I’m not done yet. I lower my gaze back to the page, forcing myself to keep reading. There is one final section—the instructions for the working itself.
And this is when my heart really sinks because of course it can’t be done just anywhere. The spell requires a place of power—a seat of authority where time and memory are anchored by authority and blood.
The King’s Court–that’s where the spell must be woven together.
I stare at the words, my heart thumping dully in my chest.
The royal court. The seat of the crown. A place I have never seen and have no reason—no right—to enter.
And yet the spell is clear–unless it’s done there, the weaving will fail.
I read the final lines slowly, committing them to memory even as disbelief curls tight in my chest.
Unstop the four where crown holds sway,
Call Earth and Flame and Sky and Spray.
Name the hour you would reclaim,
And let the time bend to your name.
The words settle into me, heavy and final in my mind. I need to collect four impossible elements and take them to the King’s Court to make this work.
This spell isn’t a quick and easy solution–it’s a quest. Four quests, actually. Five if you count somehow getting into the King’s Court to work the spell once I’m done.
And I don’t know how I’m meant to take even the first step!
My silence spell gives a dangerous little flutter around me and I nearly gasp. I have to stop thinking and move. I have to close the Grimoire and get back to my bed before Sister Agatha wakes and finds me here.
My fingers reach for the edge of the page…and that is when a voice behind me speaks, cool and sharp as a knife sliding between my ribs,
“So, little priestess…you managed to escape my curse.”