Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Books have been known to disappear in the Living Library. I’m asking, Ancient One, that you hide this when the queen comes looking.
—Journal of Khato, Master of Spells.
Iwhipped my head around, searching for some invisible force. My eyes snagged on a thin strip of white in the line of books down the hall. I plucked the book off the shelf and gently cracked it open. A soft sigh escaped the pages in a whiff of woody leather as they slipped through my fingers.
Fabia’s Fables, the title read. I opened to the story of The People of the Stars. I pinched my brows, remembering the stories my father used to recite about the children of the gods.
What was a book of Sultiran fairy tales doing in the Living Library? I moved to flip through the small book when Isla’s jasmine breeze floated through the stacks.
I slid the book back into its place before turning toward her. She swaggered down the aisle, a look of triumph on her face as her black waves bounced in the soft light.
“Any luck?”
She smirked in reply. “Why would I need luck when I have this charm and this mind?” she said, an all-but-innocent look flashing across her face.
“He’ll meet us on the fifth level. I’ve sent word to Drystan and Vienah to join us. They've both improved in manifesting their power, but any time we can get with the master of spells will be valuable, especially as we prepare for our return to Sultira.”
“Good,” I said, nodding. “Because I’m not finding anything in these.” I gestured to the books.
“The menders commended her soul this morning,” Isla murmured. “I saw the smoke.”
A weight settled in my stomach. This whole thing seemed wrong. Isla was silent for a few moments, and she finally shuddered, shaking off the stillness of death.
“Hey,” I murmured, glancing back at the stacks where the white tome seemed to have disappeared. “Have you ever heard of the People of the Stars?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she replied, cocking her head to the side as if searching her memory.
She slapped her hands on the table before us, and I jumped. Her eyes pinned me with a mischievous gaze, and her lips tilted upward.
“We’ll meet with the master of spells soon. But first, I have a surprise for you,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.
She plucked out a large, crimson book she had tucked beneath her arm. She flipped through the pages, finally landing on the chapter she was looking for, and I choked as my eyes landed on the image before me.
She slid her amused gaze to me, delighting in my shock, and whispered, “The Slithering Serpent.”
An hour later, we had pored over Volume One of the Sensua, the Lotrennian Book of Bodies. Laughter erupted from Isla, and she clamped her mouth shut as heavy steps padded around the corner.
My heart seemed to glow brighter from behind the shadow. Isla always knew when I needed this time with her, even if guilt accompanied every smile she pried from me.
“Okay, I’m sorry. But these?” I whispered, paging through the last few chapters of the volume. “Impossible. There is absolutely no way.”
“These have all been tested and proven. These are not theories, you scholar.” She laughed.
“So, you’ve tried them all?” I asked pointedly.
“Many of them, yes,” she murmured, sliding her amber eyes toward me.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no way. This one? This one?” I argued, stopping on a page and pointing to a couple in a ridiculous position.
“Get up, and I’ll show you,” she dared, raising her eyebrows in challenge. “Come on. I’ll show you, and then you can give Bayne the surprise of his life when he gets back after the Awakening.”
The Lotrennian celebration marked by the summer solstice would happen in a couple days. I barked out a laugh and stood.
“Okay, you be the man,” she said, pointing to the stacks behind us.
“Why do I have to be the man?” I shot back. “If I’m doing this for Bayne, I need to play my part. You be the man.”
“Fair.”
She stood against the stacks and motioned to the floor in front of her. “Okay, so I think if you start with your back on the ground,” she began as I lay down in front of her. “Yes, so now give me your feet and kind of walk—”
“Ow!” she yelped as I scooted my feet up the side of the stacks, knocking down books and shoving my heel in her gut. She grappled for my ankles and raised them above her shoulders. I grunted as I tried to hold my weight above myself, my shoulders and wrists barking under the strain.
“Yes.” She struggled, holding my feet up in the air.
My back leaned against her knees and thighs, and she wiggled herself behind me, trying to line up.
“Yes, so I think if he is behind you like this…”
“There’s no way,” I grunted through ragged breath. “Look at the angle! He would break!”
A cackle burst from Isla’s lips, and she dropped my feet. I tumbled over myself and onto the books I’d kicked down.
“Ow! You brat!” I yelled.
She doubled over. Laughter bubbled from my mouth as I shoved her to the side, trying to get up.
“I told you it was impossible.” I laughed.
“Maybe this is supposed to be for two men?” she asked, craning her neck to look at the page in the book.
“Definitely still impossible!”
“You’re right. Maybe we elves have devolved since writing this.” She flipped to the front of the crimson tome, eyeing the date. “The elves that lived three thousand years ago must have had more flexible cocks.”
Laughter cackled from my lips and tears formed in the corners of my eyes. Moments later, footsteps shuffled down the hall. Isla turned to me with wide eyes, and we scurried from the aisle to meet the master of spells.
Vienah’s strawberry blonde waves bounced as the wooden basket soared through the center of the massive tree.
I’d grown fond of the young woman I’d met in Odessa, one of the few magically gifted in the Rising.
A spattering of freckles dotted the human water witch’s light cheeks, making my heart ache as my thoughts drifted to Morwyn.
Was it possible she had a little Votruvian in her blood?
A shudder ran through me as Lord Astraeus’s face flashed through my mind’s eye.
After the Battle of Odessa, he’d sailed off on the Hydra with what remained of his crew to reconvene with the rest of his fleet of pirates from Votruvia.
The Lord of Marisarma might have aided the Rising, but his motives were still unclear.
I was glad to be far, far away from the pirate.
Vienah offered a small smile to Drystan, her brown eyes soft in the warm light of the rotunda.
Drystan’s tan cheeks deepened as a tinge of red rushed to them.
He offered the water witch a close-mouthed smile before his almond eyes darted away.
The gesture was not lost on Isla as her lips quirked to the side, eyes bright as she delighted in Drystan’s awkwardness.
Isla led us through the stacks until we came upon a door off an alcove at the outer edge of the level. She knocked softly, and the vines twisting around the handle of the door unwound. We stepped into the brightly lit room, where a small man hunched over a table littered with scrolls.
Dark, slightly pointed ears poked out from beneath long, gray hair. His brown eyes raised up above his round spectacles and landed on me as he motioned for us to enter.
“Welcome.” He motioned with his hand, and a warm breeze laced with cardamom and spice sent four chairs smoothly sliding over from the corner of the room.
“Thank you for seeing us,” I said, leading our small group to the table.
“Khato, Master of Spells.” Isla motioned to the mystic hunched over the table and offered a low bow before introducing the three of us.
“Isla said you had some questions for me,” he began, his gray eyebrows raising as he motioned us to sit.
The fresh ache of loss swarmed my chest as Drystan found a seat across from me.
He caught my gaze as he adjusted his glasses, a flash of pain sparking in his crystal eyes.
We’d spent years in a similar place of learning together, looking to the older and wiser for guidance.
This was familiar. It was as if we were back in the Temple of the Sky in Aedrialis, in Father Marcus’s scholar room.
Guilt raked at my chest. Was Father Marcus even still alive? We’d left him behind…
I blinked, finding the rest of the eyes in the room on my face, waiting.
“I’m most concerned about the rings on the bones,” I said after divulging the details of my examination. “Have you ever come across this type of damage? Whether it be from injuries or illness?”
“I have not. Though there are scrolls here I’ve not had the time to examine,” he replied.
My hands kept moving, translating for Drystan without thinking.
“What if she suffered the same illness years later?” I asked, finally voicing the ridiculous conclusion I’d come to. The other trauma to her bones…the breaks, the fractures, they’d all happened again. “Would that cause the circular wounds to appear in the same way?”
Khato frowned. “Unlikely,” he murmured after a moment. “Ailments like the fire pox are more random than that. If she survived the first illness, it’s unlikely she would have contracted it again. And if she did, it wouldn’t have left its mark on the bone the exact same way.”
Right. I knew this.
“But, it’s always worth taking a closer look. Would you sketch them?” he asked, handing me a roll of parchment.
“Water Witch,” Khato said, turning to Vienah. “I understand you’ve mastered the sky.”
I glanced up from the skull I’d begun to sketch, and Isla froze. The sky? Vienah blinked.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Vienah murmured, cocking her head to the side.
I had to give her credit. She was a better liar than I was, but that didn’t stop the slow smile that spread on the ancient elf’s cracked lips.
“Come now,” Khato huffed through his laugh. “I am Lotrennia’s Master of Spells. I am seven hundred years old and have been a mystic for half that time. There is not much that goes on in this land I don’t know about.” He raised bristly eyebrows at her.
Vienah straightened, glancing at us.
“It is a rare gift,” he continued, sitting back, “to influence the rain.”
The rain. It had rained quite a bit since our arrival. I’d thought it was only because of the arrival of spring, or maybe my ignorance of the Lotrennian weather. And it had been so humid.
“Our forces need to eat,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Vienah’s power is a welcome gift to those in Lotrennia,” Isla said, pulling Khato’s attention away from the water witch. “We are lucky to have her for the short while she is on our shores.”
Soft paper slipped through my fingers as I shuffled my sketches, stepping to where Khato sat hunched in the corner of the room, reviewing a scroll that looked more ancient than him.
Seven hundred years, he’d said. To live that long… He raised his tawny eyes and nodded his head in thanks. I lingered for a moment, scanning the withered text in front of him.
“Why aren’t there texts on the Bellators?”
Isla casually stepped to my side, and Drystan glanced up at the movement. The master’s eyes softened as if he expected the question. As if he understood the desperate need for information about the foreign powers living within me.
“I’m sure your friends have already filled you in,” he said softly, angling his head toward Isla.
“They were lost during the War of Ruin, after the demise of the Bellators. But how?” I motioned with my hands to the walls, the living structure that seemed sentient, protective, even.
A strange, glassy look coated his eyes for the briefest moment before he shook his head and shrugged his hunched shoulders. “It is a mystery we’ve spent hundreds of years digging for answers. Our best guess is that the texts were either lost or stolen during the war.”
The corner of my lips hung in disappointment, and his gray eyebrows tilted up.
“These powers are new to you, Bonder. And having spent your entire life shadowed from the truth of the world, my guess is that they’re overwhelming on a good day, suffocating on a bad one. But even if the Bellator texts remained, I am doubtful they would give you the answers you seek.”
My brows pinched, and he offered a reassuring smile.
“What is transformation, but rebirth? Creation itself? It has pushed its way into a place clouded in darkness. There are two extremes now attempting to coexist in the walls of your inner being. Dark and light, death and life. They are to the other as oil is to water. And how do you mix the two?”
“Flour,” Vienah piped in from her desk.
My lips twitched as Khato huffed a laugh.
“You need something to bind them,” he explained, turning to me.
“I don’t know what that is,” I replied.
He gave me a sad smile. “The universe is cunning. It has a way of leading us to our fate on broken roads, over impassable mountains, and through treacherous waters. Trust it. Allow the universe to lead you to yours.”
My heart stilled. He removed his spectacles, his penetrating eyes scanning the air around me as if tracing some invisible web.
“The gods certainly do have interesting ways of leading us to where we need to be,” Isla added.
The master’s eyes flicked to Isla. “It’s not the gods, my dear. The threads of the universe…” he mused, eyes darting back to open air around my head. “Endless possibilities exist. Curious links and connections…”
I swallowed, the weight of my crumbled identity and crushing responsibility pressing down upon my shoulders, leading me blindly toward an unknown fate.