22. Dark Divinity
Dark Divinity
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked, his voice hollow, verging on indifferent. “You must realize it will likely only distress you. My talents are not here for the purpose of your self-flagellation… or your masochism.”
Blackstone didn’t look up as he spoke, but continued to hunch over his work station, tying a thin, silver thread around a fragile-looking bone, a clump of what I guessed to be drakai hair, a crow’s skull, a large butterfly, and part of a snakeskin.
Once he had the thread exactly where he wanted it, he tied it off carefully, and stepped back, surveying the work critically with his pale eyes.
That one will do harm, a voice hissed softly in my mind. Much harm.
Not Bones.
It was a different voice that time. I’d heard it a few times now, but I couldn’t pinpoint where it came from. It definitely wasn’t Bones, but something about it resonated with him.
It wasn’t Malefic, at least I didn’t think it was.
“It’s not,” Blackstone said, his voice back to annoyed.
It will do harm, the voice repeated.
If it felt any of my thoughts or questions about what it was, or where it came from, it had no interest in answering me. It didn’t respond to Blackstone’s comment, either. It remained focused on the talisman.
Sickness. Bad dreams. No sleep. An endless nightmare of waking. Insanity.
Curiosity sparked in me.
Who is it for? I asked tentatively.
Does not know, the voice hissed, quieter. Does not wish to know. Cleaner. Less uncomfortable. He fulfills the order, and does not ask.
He could just not make them, I thought back with a scoff.
Blackstone’s eyes rose to mine.
The look there was so sharp, so knowing, I questioned briefly whether the voice was actually him, which was an unnerving thought.
“No,” the magical objects master said flatly.
Walking over to a small cauldron on a white-blue fire, he lifted it by its long, blackened handle.
He tilted the small chamber as he bent down to peer into it, presumably to check the progress of something happening inside that small pot.
He went on speaking to me lazily, as if he hadn’t just answered a thought passing through my head.
“We were discussing something,” he remarked, a hint of impatience mixed with warning in his words.
“What is your latest progress with the collar? Greythorne was working on that, was he not?” His pale eyes briefly shifted to assess mine.
“Ironically, the most comprehensive texts on magic suppression live inside the Sanctum Occulus. Some of those texts were stolen in the raid, but not all of them.”
Was the voice his raven perhaps?
“No,” Blackstone said, sharper, with more impatience. “Do you intend to answer my questions? Or is this to be a pointless guessing game?”
“No,” I said. Then, thinking, I added, “We’ve been thinking about distractions.
If I get good enough to bring a bunch of us into the Black Tower, that is.
” I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Alaric’s gotten us a ridiculously large amount of the human drug, L.S.D.
We figured that would cause a bit of chaos. ”
Blackstone lifted his head from where he’d bent back over the talisman. He stared at me with unmoving eyes, as if waiting for me to tell him I was joking. “That is the most positively idiotic idea I’ve ever heard,” he said flatly.
I couldn’t suppress a faint smile. “You’ve heard of it, then? Lysergic acid diethylamide? It’s a human hallucinogen. Quite strong, especially in the amounts Alaric has.”
He’d already lowered his head back to the talisman. “I’ve heard of it. I know what it does. Again, I hope you are not serious. That is a stupid, reckless idea. Something only a half-human would even contemplate.”
“It was Alaric’s idea,” I reminded him.
He didn’t answer.
I watched his back as he lifted up the small, iron-looking cauldron he’d grabbed before and brought it over to the talisman. Using a small spout, he poured liquid silver over where he’d tied the thread.
He sprinkled a few different powders over the cooling silver, murmuring castings under his breath. At the end, he pressed a pence-sized jewel into the center of the silver seal.
Stepping back, he surveyed his work.
He must have been satisfied, because he walked the iron pot back over to the still flaming stove, and set it carefully back on the burner.
“Are you still planning to break into the Tower, then?” he asked. “I thought you told me young Mr. Bones was quite adamant you not do that… for reasons that sounded quite sensible.”
His back was to me again, but I rolled my eyes.
“For a revolutionary, you’re not exactly revolutionary,” I pointed out. “We have to stop Malefic from his Ascension, and his ‘Great Ritual.’ You know as well as I do that he’ll perform both rituals at the Tower. We need a plan to thwart that.”
“Can you repeat it?” he asked in that deep, resonant voice. “The phasing? You’ve only accomplished it the once, haven’t you? And I don’t recall you ever saying how you accomplished it. Or if it was something you could do again.”
I folded my arms, exhaling. “I actually phased a few times. The first time, it was because I got attacked. Someone slammed into me by the fountain, and I phased through the marble base. The second time, I jumped out a window in Bones’s tower.”
The pot clanked where he knocked into it with a hand.
That time when he turned, he narrowed his pale eyes at me.
Just then, Morag herself made an appearance, flapping up to the window and landing heavily on her perch.
I was standing right next to it, mostly because I preferred to be by the open window when Blackstone was brewing all of his concoctions at once, otherwise the smell was overpowering to the point it made me dizzy.
“Hey, Mo,” I murmured to her.
She squawked a hello in my general direction, then began clicking and clucking.
“I didn’t forget this time,” I assured her.
I reached into my pocket and fished out a walnut, which she took happily from my fingers. She stuck it carefully between her toes and hammered at it with her black beak. I’d learned she preferred to shell them herself.
She grumbled and chortled appreciatively as she began to eat the nut from around the broken shell.
When I glanced back at Blackstone, he was watching me with Morag.
“You told Mocking about Bones’s condition?” he asked.
His voice was deceptively casual.
“Oh,” I said. “Yes. I meant to mention that. I told Alaric, Jolie Harringbone, and Nyx Minh.” I paused when a muscle in his cheek twitched.
“They’ve been helping me with this for months.
It’s ridiculous not to give them all the information they need.
Either they’re involved and helping, or they’re not. I decided they are.”
Blackstone nodded slowly, his expression unreadable.
“And you trust them?” he asked, leaning against his work counter. His long-fingered, very white hands wrapped around the stone edge.
“I do,” I said. “More than some of the people in Golden Sun.”
His expression soured slightly at that, but he didn’t argue.
“Who attacked you by the fountain?” he asked next.
I sighed, combing my fingers through my hair, which was a little wilder than usual since I’d just washed it and let it air dry, instead of using my normal range of spells and sprays to make it smoother. I’d found a few things Bones used on his own hair that I liked, too.
Morag chattered at me, her voice sharp, and I reached back into my pocket. I fished out another walnut, and handed it to her. She chortled happily as she took it delicately from my outstretched palm with one talon.
“I don’t know,” I said, a little impatient. “I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”
When Blackstone didn’t answer, I made my voice a touch louder.
“What can you tell me about divinity primals?” I asked.
He blinked, the closest he ever came to demonstrating real surprise. Then he managed to surprise me. His lips twitched, then stretched into something that was almost a real smile.
“Did Bones finally tell you, then?” he asked.
I frowned at his words, confused. “Bones? No. Alaric mentioned it.”
Instantly, the smile faded, replaced by what had to be irritation.
“Did he? Out of the blue, he mentioned divinities? What interesting conversations you and your classmates share. Most Magicals have no concept of there being a third primal classification at all. It’s a subject generally only discussed by advanced theosophists and Oracles. ”
I exhaled again, shaking my head.
Every conversation with Blackstone felt like a quiet argument.
“He mentioned it because I told him Bones is a caelum ignis,” I said, impatient. “And because I explained that Bones and I both have strange primals, and we suspect that’s the reason his magic doesn’t hurt me.”
Blackstone had glanced sharply at the door when I first said “caelum ignis,” and continued to look alarmed even after I’d fallen silent.
“What?” I said, confused.
“You should not say that out loud.” His pale eyes returned to mine, holding a warning that verged on a threat.
“Ever. If you need suggestions for euphemisms, we will develop a system for speaking of this. But do not say those words aloud again. Not to me. Not to any of your classmates. Not to anyone.”
I tried to remember if I’d said them aloud in our earlier conversation.
I decided I’d hadn’t.
“All right,” I agreed. “Is this something we should be talking about with Forsooth in the room? The three of us, I mean?”
Blackstone let out a low scoff, and folded his arms. “It might have saved some time. And Forsooth’s tower has far greater protections than this lab.”
I frowned, thinking about what he’d said. The night I’d told Luc, Jolie, Alaric, and Nyx about Bones, I’d definitely named it. We’d talked openly about caelum ignis for several hours. I must have used the term at least ten times, likely more.
Blackstone coughed.
I glanced over, and he grimaced, his face making it clear he’d heard what I’d been thinking. Uneasiness rose in my gut as I studied his expression.
“Not good?” I asked.
Blackstone gave me a flat look.