Eclipse Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 2)

by Gage Lee

  “Brand and Claude have secured your cottage. They didn’t find any weapons or traps,” he said. “We’ll return there now to search for additional clues as to who attacked you, and why.”

  The transition between Hagar’s secret meeting room and my cottage happened between breaths. It was so smooth it took my brain several seconds to catch up with my body. On top of the sensory changes I was dealing with from my core advancement, that was almost enough to make my empty stomach do a dangerous flip-flop.

  Hagar put a hand on my shoulder to steady me and looked at me curiously.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Just a little disoriented,” I said. “I’m not used to popping in and out of places without warning.”

  “Ah, yes,” Sanrin said. “I often forget most don’t often use that method of travel.”

  Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how Sanrin had moved us. Portals were energy intensive and usually required static gates on either end to work. The fact that he could blink us across the school with seemingly no effort made me wonder who else knew that trick.

  “We need to search this place,” Hagar told me. “Go through everything, let us know if you find anything out of the ordinary. We’ll help you.”

  Sanrin had already started rifling through my desk. He opened and closed the file drawers with calm efficiency, then started in on my closet. Hagar threw my bedclothes back, flipped my mattress, then shook my pillows out of their cases. From the rattles and banging coming from downstairs, Claude and Brand were doing the same search on the first floor.

  I ducked into the restroom off my bedroom and flipped open the top of the dirty clothes hamper. It was Thursday and laundry wouldn’t pick up until Saturday, so the hamper was filled with sweat-stiff exercise clothes, my informal robes for daily classes, and an assortment of underwear and socks. I shook out each article of clothing. I used my new jinsei sight to examine each item, hoping that would help me locate items of interest.

  Nothing.

  I opened the medicine cabinet over the sink and looked over its contents. It held my toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a stick of deodorant, and some ibuprofen for the muscle aches and pains that came from working out too hard. I checked the bottles, popped the top off the deodorant, and even squeezed a little paste out of the tube. Nothing there, either.

  I went through the small cupboard under the sink next. There were some towels, a few cleaning supplies, and something dark shoved all the way in the back of the cupboard, mostly concealed by the plumbing.

  I reached back into the shadows and pulled out a matte black jumpsuit.

  The same one I’d worn when I’d attacked Albert and fought his bodyguard. I hadn’t wanted the school laundry to find that, so I’d hidden it in the last place I thought they’d look. It had been under there ever since. My eyes roamed over the black material for a second, and a burst of excitement rushed through me when I caught a spark of jinsei where it didn’t belong.

  “Found it!” I rushed back into the bedroom, the jumpsuit in my arms. “Right here!”

  A thin crystal square, no bigger than my pinky nail, was attached to the back of the suit’s right shoulder. It was surrounded by fitful sparks of sacred energy, and its surface was cracked in two places. An intricate script had been carved into the square’s surface, but was now almost obliterated by scorch marks.

  “Well,” Sanrin said. “Someone certainly doesn’t like you very much.”

  “Is that an anchor?” Hagar said. “I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never seen one in person.”

  “That it is,” Sanrin confirmed. “This is definitely how they breached your defenses, Jace. Where did you get this jumpsuit?”

  “It’s what I wore when I went after Albert,” I said. “His bodyguard must’ve stuck it to me while we were fighting. I had no idea.”

  I felt both stupid and vulnerable. I should’ve checked the suit as soon as I returned to the cottage. Of course, at that time I was still an initiate without the advantages of an adept core’s enhanced senses, so it would have been much harder to spot the crystal anchor. I also had no idea what an anchor was, or how they could have used it to track me, so it would have been easy to assume the square was just part of the suit. My frustration turned slowly to anger.

  I’d been kept in the dark about so many things, and now one of those things had bitten me. Enough was enough.

  “Maybe if people told me what was going on, I would have caught this,” I said. “If that’s what the assassin used to reach me here, then they could use it to send more of their people.”

  “No,” Sanrin said. “The anchor is a onetime-use device. Though your assailant may not need an anchor to return. If he has a strong enough emotional connection to a location, a skilled portal pilot could get him here. From the sound of your fight, his emotional connection will be quite strong.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I mean, really awesome. I’ll have to move out of here. If assassins can pop in and out anytime they want, I need somewhere safer to live.”

  Hagar and Sanrin exchanged glances. I didn’t like that look at all.

  “You should stay here,” Sanrin said. “I’ll have Claude and Brand arrange for a security detail to be stationed outside the cottage. If there’s another attack, they’ll respond within seconds.”

  “I’ll stay here, too,” Hagar said. “We’ll be safer together.”

  “We’ll be safer where the assassins don’t know how to...” I stopped, frowned, then glared at Sanrin. “You want me to stay here as bait.”

  “That is such a crude term,” Sanrin said. “I prefer to think of you as a lure. I have no intention of letting the assassins get their jaws on you. When they make another attempt, we’ll catch them. Our interrogation of their assassin will get us that much closer to cracking open the heretic network. And then we can put an end to this whole sordid chapter of Empyreal history.”

  That sounded incredibly dangerous to me. It also sounded like a way to speed things along and get the elders to focus on finding my mother.

  “If I do this,” I said, “then you’ll start looking for my mother, right away. If she’s out there and someone knows who she is, then she’s in danger.”

  “You have my word,” Sanrin said.

  Something about the way he said those words made me hesitate. There was a strange evasiveness in his tone, as if he knew something he didn’t want to tell me just yet.

  We eyed one another warily. Then I nodded.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  The Garbage

  THE ELDERS WANTED ME to keep my usual schedule. If I suddenly went into lockdown mode, whoever had sent the assassins would be much less likely to send another killer after me. Since the elders wanted the bad guys to take the bait, I continued to attend classes, spent time meditating with Rachel, had meals with my friends, and pretended I wasn’t worried about another attempt on my life.

  And that’s how I found myself underneath the School of Swords and Serpents alongside the rest of the students in my Intermediate Alchemy class. Professor Ardith and Headmistress Cruzal had taken us down there on what they referred to as a “field trip,” but the rest of us were quickly realizing it was an unpaid maintenance detail.

  This,” the headmistress said, “is the containment area for the School’s waste disposal system.”

  “The garbage dump,” Clem said, much to the delight of the rest of the class. “Honored Headmistress, I’m not sure what this has to do with our Intermediate Alchemy course.”

  Professor Ardith clapped his hands and tutted at the chuckling students gathered around him in the narrow, damp, and somewhat sticky stone corridor deep beneath the School’s main campus.

  “Quiet,” he said. “That includes you, Ms. Lu.”

  Rachel giggled at Clem’s statement, and was much slower to get her laughter under control than the rest of us. She fidgeted next to me, hiding her face behind her hands, her shoulders heavin
g as she struggled to stifle her amusement.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped, at last. “Please continue, Professor.”

  “The School has need of your assistance, students,” Ardith said, pacing back and forth in the small space like a strutting rooster. “The containment vessels are currently filled with waste aspects. We need to transfer those aspects into transport vessels so they can be disposed of properly. This is not pleasant work, but it will give you all practical experience in handling dangerous aspects.”

  “Now we’re garbage men,” I muttered, setting Rachel off into another burst of choking laughter. She elbowed me in the ribs as Ardith glared at her.

  The professor was clearly unamused with Rachel’s laughter, and he pointed one slender finger at her over the heads of our classmates.

  “Since it appears that Ms. Lu cannot control herself, she will be our first volunteer,” he said. “Headmistress Cruzal, please step over here, beside me, and we will begin.”

  With his boss out of the way, Ardith raised his hands toward the opposite wall of the hallway. Thin threads of jinsei sprang from his fingertips to the faint outline of a design inscribed into the stone. Silver light poured through the complicated pattern, eliminating edges that had been weathered and rounded by the centuries. Despite its great age, the scrivening etched into the wall had no missing links or loops and appeared as sound and strong as the day it’d been created.

  A few moments after Professor Ardith activated the scrivening, the intricate design faded away to reveal an open archway into a silo-like chamber. I saw a cluster of tall, thin cylinders through the opening, and caught a glimpse of the much larger room past them. It was impossible to say for certain how many aspects those vessels could contain. If I had to guess, I would have said they held several million aspects.

  “Ms. Lu,” Ardith said, “please step into the chamber. The silver vessels are for containment, the copper vessels behind them are for transport. You will find a small spigot at the bottom of each containment unit, and a focusing funnel at the top of each transport unit. Your task is to transfer the waste aspects from the spigot to the funnel. I suggest you open the spigot very slowly and very carefully. You may begin when you are ready.”

  “Hey,” I said and caught Rachel’s arm. “Just crack the spigot a tiny bit. Cycle your breathing, transfer the waste aspects through your aura, then purge them into the funnel. Don’t try to rush.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Rachel said and squeezed my hand. Then she stepped away from me and marched into the garbage dump.

  Ardith’s eyes flicked from me to Rachel, and his lips twisted into a smarmy smirk. Of all our professors, he was the one who wore his clan allegiance on his sleeve the most clearly. He didn’t think anyone but his beloved Resplendent Suns were capable of performing even the simplest of actions, despite the fact that I’d shown repeatedly that there wasn’t anyone in the school better at handling aspects and raw jinsei than I was. Even without my core, the experience I’d gained working with Hahen put me far, far ahead of any other students in my class.

  “Let’s get closer,” I said to Clem and pulled her toward the other side of the hallway, where we could get a better look at Rachel’s progress.

  “I don’t like this,” my friend whispered. “It’s dangerous.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Ardith’s being a very special kind of jerk today.”

  “Cruzal should know better,” Clem muttered. And then we were too close to the teachers to speak and had to worm our way through the other students to get a front-row seat to Rachel’s attempt.

  She’d already cracked the spigot open by the time we could see her, and her aura contained the first waste aspects that had leaked out of the containment vessel. Her face was wrinkled into a disgusted frown at the stink and slimy feel of the rot aspects she’d already processed. She wasn’t used to handling waste like this, and the handful of disgusting green motes clogging her aura must have tasted like a hearty gulp from a gallon jug of spoiled milk.

  With one shaking hand, she closed the spigot and cycled deep, cleansing breaths through her core. The air in the waste unit was far from pure and clean, but it was a far cry better than the disgusting mess in Rachel’s aura. As we watched, she fashioned one of her serpents and guided it toward the funnel. With each breath she took after that, the rot aspects flowed out of her aura and into the transport vessel. It was a gross, annoying job, and I was impressed at how well Rachel had handled herself. She’d lost some aspects by not using a serpent to gather them from the spigot, but she’d still done very well.

  Much better than I had my first time in Hahen’s laboratory, as a matter of fact.

  “I suppose that’s acceptable for a Disciple,” Professor Ardith said. “When you’ve cleansed your aura, you may exit the chamber and our next volunteer can continue the process. Perhaps we’ll finish the transfer by sometime next year.”

  “Considering her background, she’s done very well,” Headmistress Cruzal said. The words set my teeth on edge, and I opened my mouth to say something.

  Only to be stopped by Clem’s sudden stomp on my toes.

  “Don’t get yourself in trouble,” Clem said. “Rachel can handle herself.”

  While my friend’s words were true, that didn’t make it any easier for me to swallow my anger. I knew what it was like to be treated like dirt. Clem didn’t. Still, it wouldn’t do any of us any good for me to start a fight with the headmistress. So far, she liked me. If I upset that apple cart, there was no telling what kind of trouble I might get myself into. Assassins were enough for me to deal with at the moment.

  Rachel finally shambled out of the chamber, her eyes wide, her forehead dotted with beads of perspiration. She blew strands of her bangs out of her eyes with an exasperated breath and bowed to Professor Ardith.

  “Thank you for the instruction, honored Professor,” she said. “It was most enlightening.”

  “Yes,” Ardith agreed. “I’m sure it was. Since your friends also can’t quit talking during a demonstration, Ms. Hark will be our next volunteer.”

  Clem frowned at the professor’s words, and I braced myself for an angry retort. Instead, the adjudicator’s daughter nodded, bit her lip, and marched into the chamber. She stiffened her spine and took up a position midway between the spigot and the funnel. She cycled her breathing, filling her aura with aspects from her surroundings and her own unique aspects. From the latter, she fashioned her serpents, and they rose from her palms like a pair of ivory cobras.

  Clem guided her right hand’s serpent toward the spigot and her left toward the funnel. I recognized what she was trying to do and wondered if she could pull it off. Pulling the rot aspects in through one serpent and pushing them out through the other was a tricky maneuver for someone without the benefits of a core like mine, and I’d never seen my friend do anything remotely like this before.

  Ardith must’ve really ticked her off.

  Clem took another deep breath, and at the same instant used her serpent to crack the spigot on the containment vessel. The glowing tentacle of her essence swooped down to plug the spigot so the aspects couldn’t escape into the air. She then inserted the other tentacle into the funnel, closed her eyes, and began her meditation technique.

  With every cycle of breath, Clem absorbed more and more rot aspects into her aura. I was no expert on waste management, so I wasn’t sure why the school had so many garbage aspects around. Maybe they were reclaiming the jinsei and storing the waste aspects, like I’d done for Tycho.

  Whatever the case, the containment vessel had far more rot aspects than Clem had anticipated. Her aura filled with them, and she struggled to push the toxic gunk up through her other serpent and into the funnel. She was overwhelmed and needed help.

  I took a step forward, only to be hauled up short by Ardith’s barked command.

  “Stop.” He stepped forward, put a hand on my shoulder, and glanced into the room where Clem struggled valiantly to do as she’d been asked
. “She’s fine. Certainly the daughter of someone so powerful as Adjudicator Hark won’t have any trouble with a little job like this.”

  “It’s poisoning her,” I said. “Let me close the spigot so she can process the aspects.”

  “It’s an important lesson to learn,” Ardith said, his voice low. “She thought she was more capable than she was. It’s a mistake she won’t make again.”

  I glanced toward the headmistress, who was busy discussing some unimportant bit of school business with one of my fellow students. I started to raise my hand, and Ardith snatched it out of the air and forced it back down to my side.

  “Don’t embarrass your friend,” he said. “Or me.”

  Clem’s aura had taken on the the foul, sickly green of stagnant swamp water. Her head lolled on her neck, and the only thing that held her upright was the connection she’d forged between the vessels. I held my breath and counted, slowly, trying to calm myself, hoping that Clem would recover.

  And then I saw what I’d feared.

  The rot aspects were trying to push their way into her jinsei channels. The same thing had happened to me, only with fire aspects, when I was working with Hahen. Those had done significant damage, but I’d healed. Rot aspects, though, could destroy flesh. Clem could be crippled.

  I moved toward the door again, and Ardith grabbed my arm. His eyes flashed with cold anger at my defiance. For the briefest flicker of a moment, I thought he’d strike me.

  A heavy pressure built behind my eyes, and the dark urge wanted this confrontation. If Professor Ardith attacked me, he’d be dead before he knew the mistake he’d made. It’d be Singapore all over again. Only this time it wasn’t a nobody from the camps who’d be dead, but a teacher at the most prestigious Empyreal school in the world. There’d be questions I couldn’t answer, and then they’d put me under a microscope until they figured out what I’d done.