Chapter Fifteen
Ena
Ty was, unfortunately, not able to join her for research the next day, or the next.
Almost an entire week went by in the blink of an eye, and Ena was starting to feel increasingly anxious and frustrated that she hadn’t found any of the additional information they needed about the amulet or the binding spell.
On the day before the onata celebration, Ena spent the entire morning poring over the witch’s journals that Ty had gotten from Petyr for the third time.
Mostly, the journals were just records of potions made and spells conducted, including who those services were traded to and what was received in exchange, with an occasional brief description of the negotiation that led up to the trade.
So far, the only information of value she’d found was a vague description of the amulet—the same one that Ty had already identified before he’d come to Auster to look for it.
It was located on an inventory list—a dry categorization of all the sacred objects in the Coven’s possession and their estimated value.
One line mentioned an amulet of great power that was being kept with “the Coven matriarch,” but there had been no way to tell which Coven it was referring to, hence why Ty had come to Auster first. Now, obviously, they knew it had been referencing Occidens, but that was old information, and Ena hadn’t been able to find anything else helpful to their cause.
She made a mental note to ask Ty more about Petyr, and how in the world the man had deduced so much about the amulet from such little information, because there was no way he could have known what the amulet was for or what the witches had done from the little Ena had read.
In the end, though, Ena decided to put aside her futile efforts researching the amulet and instead focus on their other dilemma—what to tell Cole tomorrow at the onata celebration about their mission to figure out some way to Imbue her Gift into an object.
She’d put her efforts on that issue on hold after Ty had told her not to worry about it, but still found herself wanting to contribute something, if only to make things easier on him with Cole, so she sought Nial for some books on runes and Imbuing.
She found the old daemon puttering around the Archives, pulling books off shelves and then putting them back with seemingly no rhyme or reason.
“Excuse me, Nial?” Ena asked cautiously.
“Yes, my dear,” he said, turning towards her with a kindly smile. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for more books on daemonic runes and Imbuing. Do you know where I can find some?”
“Yes, certainly, my dear,” he said. His black robes swished at his heels as he turned and shuffled to the far side of the Archives.
Ena followed him as he began haphazardly pulling books off the shelves and loading them onto a cart for her.
He didn’t even seem to check the titles or reference any sort of system to know where the books were; it was as if he already knew what every book contained and where it was.
After loading a dozen books on the cart for her, he pushed it over to her worktable.
“Thank you,” she said, picking up the first tome and flipping it open to find depictions of runes inside. “I have to say, I’m so impressed. How is it that you know exactly where all the books are?”
He smiled kindly at her again. “It’s my Power, my dear. My memoria. I remember everything I’ve ever seen or heard my entire life. Absolutely everything I’ve done lives in my memory, from the time of my birth.”
Ena’s jaw nearly hit the floor. “Wow, really?” she asked in awe. “That’s amazing.”
“It can be…yes,” he said, smiling sadly. “But I won’t sugarcoat it, my dear. It can also be a burden too. Sometimes, the past is meant to be forgotten.”
Ena returned his sad smile as he turned to leave, but she was struck by how true his words were.
There had certainly been times in her past where she’d wished to forget everything that had happened with Ty, but now…
now she was endlessly grateful that she remembered, even if those memories did sometimes still feel painful.
Those experiences had made them both who they were and, in the end, brought them back together.
Ena sat down at her table in the hidden alcove and began flipping through the books.
She first wanted to understand the basics of Imbuing, so she could maybe come up with a plausible way of extrapolating its techniques for use with Wiccan Gifts.
Something that would satisfy Cole without actually working—because the idea of Imbuing her Gift into an object to be used on a witch was rather horrifying.
After a few minutes of reading, she found herself struck by how complex this magic was.
The runes seemed to act as a receptacle, she discovered, one that held the daemonic Power indefinitely within the object they were carved into.
Different runes were required to hold different Powers, and so it was always an experiment to determine the correct combination and sequence of runes for any given Power and object.
It was similar to spellwords in that the correct phrasing and word had to be used in combination with one’s Knowing to create the type of result one wanted.
And, not for the first time, she was struck by how disappointing it was that witches and daemons did not share this knowledge with one another.
There was so much more to daemonic culture than Ena had ever dreamed.
Ena continued poring over the books, but soon became stumped by continued references to the “binding rune.” This was apparently a cornerstone rune in Imbuing, and a variation of it was supposed to be included on every Imbued object to bind the Power in place.
Bind the Power…could it be?
Ena flipped frantically through a rune dictionary which cataloged every rune that had been developed and successfully used to Imbue something, looking for an image of the binding rune.
Then she gasped when she saw it.
Her suspicions were confirmed; it was the symbol on the amulet she’d been looking for! The only one she didn’t know, the one she’d never seen before.
It wasn’t a one-to-one. The daemonic version was more angled, with straight, harsh lines instead of the more elegant, curved ones on the amulet, but it was undeniably, conceptually the same thing.
That meant…
Ena’s head spun with the implications of this discovery.
Had witches learned this symbol from daemons? Or was this something that they’d developed together prior to the split? And more importantly, what was it doing on the amulet? How did the amulet have anything to do with binding or Imbuing?
Ena knew that amulets worked by enhancing magic and spells, so the symbols on it likely indicated the intention of the enhancing magic. She ran through each symbol in her mind…
The triquetra, the magic of the three Covens. Ena knew one witch from each Coven was involved in the spell—it required their combined magic, and would enhance it.
The goddess symbol, representing Gaia. The amulet drew upon and enhanced her magic. And Iblis’s, too, since the horned god symbol was also on there.
And then the binding rune was used to…what? Bind the spell in place? She knew the magic of the spell wasn’t simply Imbued into the amulet, otherwise how was it keeping all daemons from accessing Gaia’s magic without them being near it?
So in all likelihood, the enhancing properties of the amulet were creating a much farther-reaching binding effect than was normal with simple Imbuing.
The amulet was enhancing the binding effect, so rather than binding the spell into just one daemon who touched the object, it was binding it within each daemon in existence, using the enhanced magic of the three Covens, Gaia, and Iblis to do so.
Gaia, the power of that was…mind-boggling. No wonder she got such an eerie feeling when she held the amulet.
Ena looked around, finding the Archives mostly empty. She desperately wanted to discuss all this with Ty, but by her estimation, Turner wouldn’t be coming to escort her to the fighting ring for at least another hour.
Ena flitted around the Archives, flipping absentmindedly through books she’d read a dozen times already, and drawing sketches of the binding rune to bring back with her until finally, Gaia be blessed, Turner arrived.
He noticed her agitation right away. “You alright?” he asked, his fair brows crinkled in concern.
“Yes, fine,” she said. “I just… I think I found something, but I need to talk to Ty about it.”
Turner’s brows shot up in excitement. Gaia, the man really had no game face. The excitement exuded off him. “Really?” he asked. “What is it?”
“Not here…” she said. A few other daemons had come in since she’d made the discovery, and she didn’t want to risk talking about it in a public area.
The two of them packed up the books, surreptitiously returning Ty’s private reserves to Nial, before making their way back to Ty’s room.
Turner dropped her off, then left immediately to go find Ty. Ena paced the room a few times before settling in front of the trunk at the base of Ty’s bed. She opened it and rummaged around until she pulled out the small, unassuming wooden box that could only be unlocked with her magic.
Using her Knowing, she felt for the delicate metal mechanism within, and spoke.
{Clavis}
The small lock clicked, and Ena carefully opened the box to reveal the amulet.
The look of it always took her breath away—it was beautiful and terrifying at the same time, the feeling of it sending chills down her spine. And while part of her yearned to wear it—to touch it—another, wiser part didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Just then, she heard male voices and the door swung open. She stood swiftly, blocking the view of the amulet, but luckily it was just Ty, Turner, and as a bonus, Steig had come too.
“I found him,” Turner said joyfully. “And we figured Steig should be here to hear this as well.”