by T J Kelly
Three of the small books slid into a small stack to the side. I packed away the rest for later, then sat at the table. The ugly chairs were actually extremely comfortable, so score one for my father's taste.
The journals were leather bound and had dates stamped on the spines, indicating the range of entries. I picked up the oldest, covering the timeframe when my father was an apprentice, and began to read.
Two hours later, I closed the last page. My father kept meticulous notes. Even back when he was my age. That must be where I got it from because my journals were minutely detailed, too. It was important to record all the steps of a process during experiments, but it also helped future generations looking for answers.
I had come across some interesting observations in the margins about time and space that got me thinking. I had been filling the crystals to max capacity, but what if I could alter their fractals to expand them the way we expanded the inside of my pockets? Or the way we created a massive battleground inside of a small, moon-pod type dome in the middle of the castle atrium?
My father had some fascinating ideas. I would add his journals to my usual study time. It was as close as I could get to learning from him outside of working with the various department managers at Rector Enterprises. My father hadn't worked in a vacuum and neither would I. But his words held special meaning.
The second journal covered a span of years much later, when I was a little girl. I flipped through it, skimming the pages. There would be time for me to study it in-depth later, but for now I had to meet with my aunt.
Right before I closed the journal, a diagram caught my eye. It was a copy of my mother's wheel of fortune and compass rose. My father had drawn and labeled it, adding numbers in an additional circle around the outside of the normal figure. They looked like degrees. Interesting. I would have to check, but the notations in the first journal had linked direction with expansion.
There wasn't time to even glance at the third journal. I bundled them together and transferred them to my bedroom, making sure they landed on my nightstand so I could look through them before I went to sleep.
I stepped outside before I flipped the nature of magic in the crystals back to their original state. That plunged the storage building into a darkness deeper than before. The doubled strength from my use of lead remained in effect.
"Hey there, Cousin," Richard called. "Fancy meeting you here."
"Hi." I walked to where he was digging around in another building. It held several of the products Laurus Commodities sold. "What are you up to?"
"Mom asked me to get her a box of her beeswax candles. I haven't been out here in forever and volunteered to come in person."
Transfer spells were easier when the magician had already seen the item they were fetching. But it wasn't a requirement, especially for somebody as powerful as Richard.
"There's a lot of people staying here," I said.
"Ah. Yeah. Is it that obvious?" Richard shifted the box he had come for, tucking it under his arm, then closed the door behind him.
"I'm here today, too." I grinned. My cousins were engaging and charming, but they had been out in the field on an assignment that kept them in seclusion for long periods of time. It had to be hard to handle so many people all at once, even if they loved them and had missed them. "I've been limited to castle grounds for most of the time I've lived with your parents, and even though it's not as lonely as where you've been, crowds are starting to get to me."
We walked towards the castle, taking the long way around to get to the gate leading to the inner bailey. "I needed a minute," he confirmed. "I've missed everyone. But it's overwhelming."
He winked at me when he caught me staring. I couldn't help it. It was so strange to see somebody who looked so very like my uncle, but with Peony's eyes peering at me. It was hard to decide if that was more disconcerting than looking at James, who was so much like Armageddon that I would forgive somebody for thinking he was a doppelganger.
"Are you going to be working with us?" I asked. I wouldn't mind if Peony had sent him for the candles as a way of roping him into sitting in on the session. We hadn't decided on a specific agenda, but we wanted to explore my latent tendencies. Richard was a full-blown seer the way my aunt was. It would be nice to get the chance to work with him in an environment where we could have a conversation rather than throwing spells at each other. Not that there was anything wrong with combat practice.
"Yeah. Mom told me how nebulous your abilities are. Sounds interesting. At least you have the best aspects of being a seer. Being able to tell a lie is dead useful in the field."
I held the small gate open for him. He slipped through, then shifted the candles to his other arm. They weren't heavy, but I had carted them around before and it became awkward after a while. "Agreed. Has Aunt Peony talked to you about our work with Recall?" I had learned about the memory enhancer technique and the timing of a Seer's visions back when I was working with my uncle on suppressed memories. Often visions weren't revealed until too close to the event to be much use. More like last-minute emergency measures. Like the escape plan for the castle.
The image of my cast-iron scrolled mirror flashed through my mind, too quick to understand.
"She mentioned that. I think that's what she wants to focus on this morning - and use me as the guinea pig."
"Cool." I opened the castle doors, and we made our way down the hall until we reached the infirmary. My aunt's workshop was tucked away inside so she had access to her patients when needed. "Can't wait."
◆◆◆
Peony hugged Richard for a long time. She did that every time one of her sons walked into a room, and they were good about letting her. They had been away too long.
If I could, I would have hugged my mother the same way.
"Do you think somebody else thought of this and decided it was best not to know?" Richard asked after we explained about casting an altered Recall spell to access prophecies before their typical useless timing. It was a good question. I mean, when I figured out how much more powerful spells were when using lead, we classified it right away. That information was too dangerous. Who knew if this would be as well?
"That's always a possibility. But one has to wonder if we are rediscovering the method because it's needed again." Peony shifted aside a stack of bandages she folded and left on the counter. I took them from her and tucked them in the proper cabinet.
"A time and purpose for everything," Richard replied. "We could be fulfilling destiny and to question ourselves would deny the fruition of our fate."
My eyes darted back and forth as my aunt and cousin debated the philosophical side of our activities. It was fascinating. Like reading the ancient books in my workshop. I didn't know people still talked that way. Or thought about their actions like that.
I noticed several trays of herbs ready for packaging. As they continued to talk, I processed them for storage, filling small glass bottles and labeling them carefully before shutting the cabinet.
"We must not fear progress or we risk hampering our desire to explore the unknown. Without a thirst for knowledge, we stagnate." Peony waved her hand, and a tray appeared on the tea cart. "And without change, we perish."
"True that," Richard responded.
I laughed. Done with the herbs, I turned to see the two of them watching me with grins on their faces.
"Sorry, sweetheart," Peony said. "I haven't had this much fun in a long time." My aunt was brilliant, and thoughtful. She was deliberate about everything she did. Most people thought she was flighty or vague, but really she was a deep thinker. Most people didn't understand her. But obviously, her son did.
It was neat to watch. "That's cool," I assured her. "I think the world would be a better place if we all debated the consequences of our actions."
Richard took a seat near my aunt's desk. He looked at me with approval. Which was also cool.
"Would you like some tea before we begin?" Peony asked. He nodded his confirmation, but
I declined. Even a light snack weighed heavily in my stomach while working magic.
My aunt made Richard a plate and handed it over as I took a seat next to him. "We haven't figured out a system yet," I explained. "So far we've cast a wide net and sifted through our memories until we see a trace left by a prophecy."
"And you want to figure out if there is a time signature that will help determine which memory to access first?" Richard bit into a tiny salmon and dill sandwich.
"Something like that." Peony sat behind her desk and sipped her tea. She wasn't eating, either. "I have a lifetime of memories to get through, and we only have indirect, nebulous clues to follow. Lia doesn't function in the same way. There aren't any prophecies to look for. But you're young. Your mind shouldn't be nearly as cluttered as mine."
I laughed. Peony was a genius. When I followed her on her search for visions to Recall, I almost got lost in the shining brilliance of her mind. "With fewer visions to work with, we can get a sense of useful timing," I suggested. It was exciting to include another person who looked as interested in the subject as we were.
"Sounds fun," Richard said as he set aside his plate. He took a final sip of tea before clearing away all the dishes with a wave of his hand.
Peony changed positions, moving to a chair near the two of us. We clasped hands in a circle, then closed our eyes. With three slow, even breaths, we were ready.
There was a small dish of soil on the desk. I leaned into it. Armageddon said Earth was best for memory work, and I found that to be true. It grounded us as we linked, my aunt taking the lead as she slowly guided us into the spell.
Richard's mind was as shiny as my Aunt's. I had worked with her enough to see the similarities so it was easier to get a sense of him. And like Peony, his visions were brighter spots in a landscape in varying colors.
"It could include aspects of the rainbow," he suggested.
We shifted our collective focus to seek the reds, first on the color spectrum. Peony had said the same thing, but there were so many color combinations of reds and red-oranges and all the way through red-purple that we couldn't tell if that was a useful way to search. But we also didn't want to just start accessing them all without a plan - recalling a vision was hard and disconcerting.
There were only two in that part of the spectrum in Richard's mind, so we focused on the purest red.
"Are you ready?" Peony asked.
"Yeah. Go for it."
Then it was my turn. We had discovered that my ability to track even the faintest of traces helped with such delicate work. I shifted and eased the three of us in, casting a gentle spell at the edge of the memory.
Clarity exploded around us. Then, we entered the vision. The forest. A sense of Richard as a teenager, accessing his magic before he turned seventeen the way most magicians did. He had been walking with his brother, the two of them home on summer break. The three of us watched a memory unfold through Richard's eyes.
"She's cute," James was saying. He was trying to convince Richard to ask out a girl from school. "And she likes you."
"Maybe." An image of the girl they were discussing flashed across his mind. "Probably," he added with a grin. But then something changed. A brightness, then dark. The world turned all wavy and the trees in the distance seemed to move on their own, shifting away from where they took root until all that remained was a blank canvas asking to be filled.
"Hey man, are you okay?" James asked. He was just visible beyond the white light that blanketed Richard's vision.
"The unimportant have a role," he replied. His tone was hollow, eerie. Richard noticed it himself even though he had no control over the words.
James stared at him in silence. The brothers had seen their mother cast visions, and he recognized it. Richard took comfort in that. He knew his brother was the right person to tell. Then James put his hand on Richard's shoulder and ducked slightly to peer into his eyes. "Go on. I'm listening," he encouraged.
"We must lift the scales," Richard continued. "A new way will show the way." The focus turned inward and Richard lost sight of his brother, of the shifting trees. In fact, even though we were still in his memory, still seeing through his eyes, his vision reflected back until we saw ourselves, the three of us there in my aunt's study. Or maybe we were seeing him seeing us. A completed loop from the past to the present. "Embrace your heritage. There are two paths."
"Whoa," I said as we were ejected from Richard's memory. "That was freaky."
His words rattled me. My father told me the same thing in my visions of him, a warning and advice projected to me through the veil. I thought his prophecy had already played out. Maybe there was more to it.
"I remember seeing the three of us in my vision back when it happened," Richard said. "But of course then it got buried in my memory. No wonder Lia looked so familiar when we met. I thought it was because I saw her on TV or in the papers."
Sometimes visions or suppressed memories offered short glimpses of themselves, usually too fast to understand. But it would give a sense of familiarity. My cousins were too deep into their mission to watch the trials for Rector Enterprises, but my picture had been plastered everywhere. It had been a reasonable assumption.
I finished writing Richard's exact words. "What do you think the thing about the scales meant?" I asked. The phrase sounded vaguely familiar.
"Another way of telling us to lift the blinders. To focus on things we haven't paid attention to before," Richard replied. "I sense a link to the first part. We've been ignoring somebody or something. As if they aren't important." He stood and stretched, shaking his hands to increase circulation. "So what do we do next?"
"Spend a few days brooding," I laughed. "You know how hard it is to link up a vision when it's revealed. It's even harder when we pull it out earlier than expected."
Richard's smile made his features even more like his mother. "Point taken. Are either of you hungry? That snack was nice but I'm always starved after working magic."
"Yeah, I could eat." I stretched, too. We hadn't been sitting long, but it felt like I had been there all day.
"Sounds like a meal is in order," Peony said. "Let's see what the kitchen has to offer."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Seven...
I stayed behind to clean up. It was my duty to introduce my cousin to a true Lia-original meal, and I really outdid myself. Both with an awesome dish but also a huge mess. It would be rude to leave it for the servants.
"Any leftovers?" Peter called as he entered the kitchen. A smile broke across my face. It was great to see him.
"Yeah, a few. Take a seat." I leaned over to give him a kiss. His fingers traced a line of Light from my cheek to my neck, sending shivers down my spine.
"How did it go?" he asked, sliding into a chair behind the large antique kitchen table.
"Great. Sifting through the mind can be so disconcerting, though," I added as I pulled out a plate and filled it with fried California-roll poppers. I had slipped in a slice of pickled ginger to cut through the additional richness of the fried wrapper. "We used colors to trace which prophecy to look at first. It kind of worked. I think. I mean, until we try two or three more, there's no way to tell if there is a proper order for recalling them much less if the sequence revealed is the right one."
Peter finished his bite and then took a sip of the sweet tea I had poured him. "These are great. Thanks." He dipped another popper in soy sauce. "What did he say?"
As he continued to eat, I relayed the prophecy word for word. "So I guess we need to figure out who the unimportant ones are and what new way will show us the way," I finished.
"Is that all?" he joked as he cleared his place at the table, setting his dishes in the sink. "It's interesting that Richard seemed to talk straight to you at the end."
"Yeah, he saw us in his vision." We left the kitchen, slowly walking down the hall towards the basement stairs. There wasn't anything going on at the moment and we decided to spend time in the game area. "Like
us, sitting there in Aunt Peony's study, today. It was so freaky."
"Almost like time travel, if you think about it."
"Yeah, I guess it is." We walked along the corridor. There were no windows since the basement had been built centuries before fire codes and was dug deep into the earth. My aunt or uncle had lined the top of the walls with Rector light crystals, brightening up the area enough that we didn't notice the lack of natural light. The basement the size of the entire castle including the open atrium in the center. It would have been an endless pit of darkness without them.
"Oh, hey!" I called when the billiards room came into view. Mort was playing a game with Joseph, my curiosity about his mysterious past making me wish I knew him better so I could pelt him with questions. "We didn't know you were down here."
"Needed to walk away from a tough case today," Mort said before sinking a ball. His staff usually handled court appearances, but he still practiced law and took on the most complicated cases. "Judge recessed for a few weeks. New evidence from the Reeves. Joseph was in from the field so we started a game. What are you two up to?"
We took a seat at the bar. "Working on ways to use that awesome staff you gave me last year," Peter answered. "I'd like to work out some moves with you later, if that's okay. And Lia was in with Rich and Peony all morning."
Mort missed his shot. He set down his cue so Joseph could take his turn. "I have some old diagrams and combat instructions in my study," he said. Mort had offices, a workshop, and study at the castle. Maybe that was why I hadn't thought about his life outside the castle walls. It felt weird that I hadn't paid attention to his life beyond what he was doing for me.
Guilt flooded my body.
"Excellent," Peter replied, rubbing his hands together like a comic book villain. I laughed, his silliness relieving the tension that had been building inside me. I was so self-centered. I had always thought I paid attention to the people around me, and by extension, because of my company, all sorts of people around the world. Yet I had no idea where Mort even lived.
