Soulkeeper Page 31

“Do you understand now what I explained earlier?” he said. “Recommendations are all they need. Try not to tell too many people about this place. I enjoy the short waits for a table.”

  Tommy simmered in his posteuphoria haze as Malik sliced away at the duck with his fork and knife. His movements were precise as a surgeon’s, Tommy noticed. Very confident. Very strong. He fantasized what it’d be like if those hands grasped not hardened silver but something much softer, much warmer, and then moved with those same disciplined movements…

  “… yet to try?” Malik finished.

  Tommy snapped out of the daydream. His mouth dropped open an inch as he fought to control his panic.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Back at the tower,” Malik clarified. He wiped his hands on a folded cloth and then dabbed a bit of fat from his chin. “You said I had not yet tried all schools of magic. Do you think there is reason I should?”

  “Well, of course,” Tommy said, glad to be back on a topic he understood. “We have far too little information to work with to make any real assumptions. Why can I cast spells and you can’t? Not a damn clue. Perhaps these individual schools are separate for a reason. Perhaps some people can master one or two but not others? What if you are incompatible with Viciss or Chyron but gifted with Gloam? The best way is to experiment.”

  “What Gloam spells do you have?”

  “Hold on, I’ll show you.”

  Tommy reached for his pocket and then stopped. His hands were still coated with grease. He quickly wiped them on his cloth napkin and then pulled out a long, rolled piece of paper.

  “I should have at least one Gloam spell on here somewhere,” he muttered as he scanned the list.

  “Tommy, what is that?”

  He glanced up. “Spells I’ve successfully cast. Why?”

  “You carry them around with you?”

  “Of course I don’t carry them around with me. The various tomes and books are still safe in the archive. These are just copies.” Tommy couldn’t read Malik’s frozen expression. Perhaps it was best he didn’t. “Anyway, this one, riiiight… here.”

  Tommy flipped the scroll about and pointed to the list. Malik scanned over it, his frown deepening. It wasn’t unhappiness, Tommy had learned. The harder he concentrated, the more his face shifted that way.

  “What exactly does this spell do?” he asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Tommy said. “When I tried it I heard whispers of voices and ideas from all directions. The source scroll was heavily damaged by fire. I could not make out much more than the required words.”

  “And so you’d have me try this uncertain spell in the middle of a crowded restaurant?”

  “It’s not that crowded.”

  “Tommy, the crowded part is not the… very well. I need not worry. I’ll fail this one just like I have failed all the others.”

  “You will if you go in with that attitude.”

  Malik glared vicious death. Tommy lifted his hands in surrender and then leaned back in his chair. His mentor memorized and rememorized the three seemingly simple words. He tried each one separately, tasting them like he did the wine. At last he pushed the scroll away, breathed out long and loud, and then brought his gaze to Tommy.

  “Gloam legere tavrum,” he said. It seemed the air around him rippled. Again he tried, this time slower. “Gloam legere tavrum.”

  Tommy shook his head. It felt like something was knocking on his temples. Soft, hesitant, and thoroughly alien.

  “Malik,” Tommy said. “Wait, I’m not… so… sure…”

  His mentor ignored the warnings. His eyes were clouding over. He spoke a third time, and with every syllable a funnel of air whirled between them. A lance of lightning shot from Malik’s forehead to his. Could no one else see this? Could no one else hear the sudden tempest roar?

  Tommy? The voice spoke within his mind. It was no doubt Malik’s, only it bypassed his ears and shot straight to his brain. A recent memory bubbled upward of its own accord. Is this… you?

  Tommy tried to focus but struggled impotently. His thoughts were scattering like cockroaches before a sudden light. Heavy sleep lined his eyes despite his confusion and panic. Memories lurched into his consciousness with no apparent reason or connection. Him and Brittany using flowers and their mother’s powders to play dress-up on a sleepy afternoon. Tedious study sessions back in Steeth. Vomiting so hard he thought he’d die after eating part of a frog on a dare. A dream from last night. The first time he masturbated when he was ten and had been horrified by the sudden stain across his trousers. These memories surfaced, popped, and vanished into a blackness blanketing his mind.

  Malik, please, he begged.

  It’s… it’s all right, Tommy. I’m gaining control.

  Sure enough, the scattershot memories slowed. His mind felt less like an avalanche and more a steady trickle. Malik was a composer inside his head, summoning memories instead of music with the waves of his hand. At first he’d flailed and spun every which way, but now they were smoothing over. Tommy hovered in a giant black void. His memories shimmered into existence, and he saw them as his eyes saw them, and he remembered his thoughts as they’d been in that moment. Somehow, he knew Malik hovered next to him, seeing and reliving exactly the same.

  I’ll pull us back, Malik’s voice echoed. I’ll take us here to the present, and then I’ll leave.

  The memories rolled forward at a steady pace, calm and controlled to the point of pleasantness to reexperience them again. Reading through his many books while Malik worked next to him. Malik suggesting they eat a meal. Their walk to the restaurant. Tommy’s exuberance upon tasting the food. The tastes washed over him again, and they had a startling clarity. The deep hunger was gone, and he could identify each flavor with clinical preciseness. He felt sad when the memory moved on. Now the taste of wine. Him observing an empty plate. Looking up.

  Him staring at Malik’s hands as his mentor ate. The fantasies he’d imagined swirled like secondary clouds to the periphery of the memory.

  “Oh fuck,” Tommy said. The words escaped his lips, and his grasp on reality hardened. He was sitting in a chair. They were in a restaurant. He was mortified. Fear and humiliation slammed away the mental connection, the lightning tether dissipated, and suddenly they were quiet and together, facing each other with their real bodies and addressing each other with their physical voices.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Tommy said. He couldn’t even look at Malik. His eyes drilled holes into his empty plate. “I’m sorry, Malik, I’m so sorry. That was inappropriate of me, I know, very inappropriate. I’m beyond embarrassed. My mind shouldn’t be that undisciplined. I cannot begin to guess your sexual preferences, and even if they did tilt a certain way that doesn’t mean you’d be interested in me, but oh fuck me, fuck, fuck, I ruined everything, didn’t I?”

  Malik’s hand once more settled atop his wrist, but this was not the same polite interruption. His fingers curled into his. The pressure increased, not much, just enough to keep skin against skin. Tommy looked up, hope battling despair. Malik did not appear upset or angry. If anything he looked amused.

  “Do not be embarrassed, or ashamed,” Malik said. “The fault is mine in traipsing through your mind when neither of us fully understood the consequences. And as for your… fantasies…”

  The heat in Tommy’s neck traveled all the way up to his ears. He must look like a ripened tomato ready to fall off the vine.

  “I will not say your feelings go unappreciated, but you should understand that I am many years your senior. I am in a position of authority over you, and that complicates things greatly. You mentor under my apprenticeship, and you work alongside me in the study of something wondrous and new. Do you understand why that makes any physical and emotional connections complicated?”

  Tommy could hardly believe what he was hearing. It was the pardon of a queen while dangling from the hangman’s noose. It was the sound of water rushing through a desert. It was the sound of the
slightest chance something more might happen, and by the Goddesses and all the magic in the world, he was ready to cling to that like a man adrift.

  “I understand perfectly,” Tommy said. “So I forgive you, you forgive me, and then we both move on like this never happened?”

  “Not quite like it never happened,” Malik said. His mischievous grin lit a fire in both Tommy’s heart and groin. “I’ve touched a school of magic! Hurry, let us return to the tower. I want to read every single Gloam spell you’ve found, and when that’s done, I want to search for more!”

  CHAPTER 29

  It wouldn’t be dark for another half hour but already the city appeared empty. Devin passed homes with lit candles hidden behind heavy curtains. Londheim was like a ship battened down for a storm, only the storm was giant owls and a mysterious psychopath murdering keepers. A novice had come bearing a letter demanding his immediate arrival at the Cathedral of the Sacred Mother. At the foot of Anwyn’s Gate leading into the cathedral grounds he discovered more than fifteen other Soulkeepers gathered in waiting. It seemed he was not the only one to receive a summons.

  “Hello, Devin,” Lyssa said as Devin joined her in the back of the group. “I thought for sure you’d be scouring the wildlands instead of sulking here in Londheim.”

  “And I would if I had a choice,” Devin replied. “I’d rather brave the black water than risk another errant shot from your pistols.”

  The freckled woman grinned at him, and Devin grinned right back. Soulkeepers often traveled alone, sometimes going months between trips to speak with their Vikar. Devin only recognized a handful of those gathered at the steps, but Lyssa had trained and graduated alongside him twelve years ago. Her auburn hair was pulled up in a bun, adding age to an otherwise youthful face. She wore a tricorn hat similar to his, only slightly smaller and sporting five raven feathers tucked into its band.

  “Do you still have the scar?” she asked.

  “It seems highly inappropriate to show my ass on the steps of the cathedral.”

  Lyssa punched his shoulder with strength far greater than a woman of such diminutive size should possess. More Soulkeepers trickled over, increasing their numbers to twenty. Deciding it enough, Forrest clapped his hands to gather their attention.

  “I’m going to keep this short,” he shouted. “Some bastard named Janus has been hunting our own, and the city guard don’t have the manpower to find him or the skill to bring him in if they do.” He lifted up a large sheet of paper with a man drawn upon the front. It was one of the wanted posters that had been nailed throughout the city for the past several days. “He’s a strange-looking sort, half his hair green instead of black, wears a long leather coat and no shirt. This might sound unbelievable, but we have corroborating accounts confirming he can change anything he touches into anything else.”

  “That’s putting it gently,” Lyssa shouted. “I saw one of the Faithkeepers he killed. Janus turned him into a goddess-damned statue before breaking off his head.”

  Murmurs spread through the twenty Soulkeepers. Devin had not heard of that one, but he’d seen the Mindkeeper melded into the wall with his blood turned to gold, not to mention the horribly disfigured men at Oakenwall.

  “Enough,” Forrest said, his deep voice easily carrying authority to silence them. “Janus has always struck after dark, so until he’s found, expect to be sleeping during the day and patrolling at night. Be warned that as of late our city’s gone to shit. We’ve got confirmed deaths by giant fucking owls, for starters, so keep an eye on the sky. The church has also been told of fox people, living gargoyles, and shapeshifting dogs. They’re all rumors, but at this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out. Better to be jumping at our own shadows than dead to some new nightmare creature. Split up in pairs and choose your districts. If you can’t agree, I’ll start making the decisions for you. Good luck, and may Anwyn watch over you.”

  Lyssa nudged Devin with her elbow.

  “Care to be my date for the night?”

  “I’d be honored.”

  Devin strolled through the group of gray-coated Soulkeepers to Forrest. Overall the mood was darkly jovial. There was an energy to confronting the unknown, and a palpable sense of finally doing something instead of idling in the shadow of the crawling mountain.

  “Got a district for me?” the giant man asked Devin when he saw him.

  “Is Low Dock still available?”

  “Sure is. Keeping an eye on your sister?”

  “What can I say, I’m a good brother.” Devin crooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Lyssa will be with me, too.”

  “Have fun,” Forrest said as he jotted it down into a small notebook. “Try not to die.”

  Lyssa and Devin walked side by side through the quiet streets of Low Dock. The moon shone bright and clear in the sky above, removing any need for the street lanterns. Devin held his armed pistol with its aim loosely pointed toward the sky. Lyssa’s custom brace of pistols were equally armed and ready, except she kept them in her holsters, the two softly swaying with the swing of her hips. Few could match her speed when it came to drawing a weapon, be it her pistols or the slender short swords strapped to her thighs.

  “I wasn’t there when the black water came,” Lyssa said after Devin finished telling her of when it flowed through the town of Dunwerth. “I missed it by only a few miles. My first experience with it was stumbling upon a tremendous black field split by the road traveling north from Pathok.”

  “Did you disturb the grass?” Devin asked.

  “Disturb it? I knelt down where the corruption started and stuck my face close enough to smell it. Gave myself a fucking eyeful when I brushed a patch with my hand. I’d rather pour salt on my eyes than go through that again. I truly thought I’d be blind for the rest of my life.”

  Devin knew he shouldn’t laugh but did so anyway.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I was convinced the entire world had turned into that choking grass. At the first patch of green I found, I dropped to my knees and bawled like a child.”

  Lyssa chuckled.

  “I do feel a little better,” she said. “So has Forrest sent you on any pointless errands?”

  “Wouldn’t call it pointless, but he sent me to a lumber camp to see if Janus had struck there before coming to Londheim.”

  “And had he?”

  Devin winced at the remembrance.

  “Yeah. He had. What about you?”

  “Forrest sent me to Roros to see if the black water had reached that far.”

  This wasn’t too surprising. The hills near the town of Roros bore the distinction of being the only place in all the Cradle where flamestone was mined. Because of this it was heavily guarded and its mines strictly regulated by the Queen.

  “I imagine if the world ended, Roros would be one of the few places to survive,” he said.

  “Pretty much,” she said. “The guards there had it boarded up tighter than an ant’s asshole. Other than that, the trip there was pleasant enough. It’s the priority that irked me. The world may be ending, but by the Goddesses, we’ll still have the tools needed to kill ourselves.”

  The two traveled the district, several hours passing quiet and uneventful. Devin was thankful. Lyssa, not so much.

  “If anything interesting is happening in Londheim, it’s not here in Low Dock,” she grumbled. “We should be in bed.”

  “Does it matter if we sleep during the night or sleep during the day, so long as we sleep?” Devin asked, trying to remain upbeat about their assignment.

  “I was thinking in the same bed, so yes, a little.”

  Devin blushed. The two had slept together multiple times since their training, stopping only after Devin met Brittany while traveling to Stomme. No, that wasn’t quite true. There’d been one more time, three weeks after his wife’s death. His mind and heart had been in a dark pit of loneliness and isolation, and he’d desperately clung to Lyssa’s burning light of humanity. He was deeply grateful, but that moment of inti
macy had been their last. Unfairly or not, Lyssa was now linked to Brittany’s death in his memories.

  “You’d find me a poor partner,” Devin said. “Out of practice and more awkward than romantic. I must refuse for the sake of my pride.”

  Lyssa rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner.

  “Please tell me you haven’t become one of those Estranged Isle exiles who thinks Anwyn desires us to die as virgins.”

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “They also insist that oaths of celibacy will return your virginity. Apparently it’s never too late to decide that the awesomeness of fucking is more than our meager souls deserve.”

  Devin’s laugh was a pleasant thunderclap across the sleepy district.

  “I’ve missed you, Lyssa,” he said. “Much more than I realized, and likely more than you missed me.”

  She looked down from the sky and winked at him.

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” she said. “It’s nice chatting with someone not so easily upset or offended. Seems most town mayors or village elders believe their pure daughters are besieged by monsters or impregnated by Ravencaller magic when they turn up ‘in a family way.’” She laughed. “I wish you’d been there with me, Devin. This haggard old woman was insisting to me that her granddaughter was possessed by a lustful ghost.” Her voice rose a pitch and she added a scratch to it. “‘I saw her when she thought we was sleeping,’ she tells me. ‘She was moaning and moving like a man was atop her, I swear, but she was all alone in that bed.’”

  Devin had encountered similar situations, particularly in the farthest reaches of West Orismund, where visits from doctors, teachers, and the Wise were a rare occurrence. He tried to be tactful when addressing such concerns. He had a feeling Lyssa did not.

  “What’d you tell her?” he asked out of morbid curiosity.

  “I told her the obvious. I said she’d caught her granddaughter masturbating and to give her some privacy next time. Old bat threw a fit and asked if such impropriety should be punished. Punished? I told her to be goddess-damned grateful. Fingers can’t impregnate her granddaughter, but a neighbor boy’s cock sure can.”