Savant (The Luminether Series)

by Richard Denoncourt

  “Finally,” the emperor said, “our magician’s efforts have paid off. Look what we have accomplished!”

  Alexandra got up from the floor and ran to the window. She stuck her head through, blinked against the crisp wind that slapped her face, and tried to see what was going on. A line of people dressed in armor and fine silks stood on the castle’s main balcony, overlooking the crowd. Though she couldn’t make out their faces, she knew exactly which one was Emperor Corgos Leonaryx. He stood a few paces before the others, fat and purple as a plum inside his fur-lined robes.

  Standing next to him was—could it be?—a young boy dressed only in rags.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Milo.”

  She looked more closely at the boy, saw the tail rising up from the small of his back, and realized that it was not her son at all. This boy, however, couldn’t have been much older than Milo and Emma.

  Then she noticed something else about him—something strange…

  The color had been drained from his body so it looked as though someone had drawn him into existence using only a soft stick of charcoal. If he had been any lighter, he would have resembled the ghost of a boy instead of a real one.

  The emperor shouted into the blue orb floating down by his belt. Nearby, his cousin Kovax made the necessary hand-motions to keep the aural amplification spell going.

  “This new weapon will allow us to draw luminether from these beastbloods, who have no right to be here in the first place.”

  The crowd roared its approval. The emperor used one of his stubby arms to indicate the Feral boy standing next to him.

  “Witness this young Feral’s transformation. Earlier, he was a normal-looking boy with rosy skin and beautiful blond hair—and a tail, of course—beastblood by all appearances. Had he cut off his tail and used colored lenses to hide the orange in his eyes, no one would ever have identified him as the beastblood that he is. That all changed when he came into contact with our newest creations, the Towers of Light and Dusk!”

  The people in the crowd lifted their fists into the air and roared. Most of them were dressed in dirty cotton shirts and tattered pants.

  “Now, now”—the emperor made a dropping motion with both hands and the crowd quieted—“do not only think of these towers as weapons. They can be used to store the blood ether taken from each and every beastblood we put inside. We will use this power for the war effort, to finally rid Astros of those scientist-magician traitors to the west, as well as all the others who have kept us down.” He clamped his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy winced up at him. “His sacrifice will be our victory!”

  The crowd opened up and poured forth a roar of approval. It sent Alexandra tumbling backward into her cell, where she slid down the wall and stayed that way for a long time.

  “Oh, gods,” she said, and her broken wings twitched beneath her weight. “He’s talking about genocide.”

  Chapter 25

  Kovax couldn’t help but smile as the crowd lifted its magnificent voice.

  Corgos turned to him and flashed that gluttonous smile of his. The emperor’s lips were never still; he was always licking them, smiling, or snarling in anger.

  “When she wakes up, she’ll think she’s still dreaming,” he said. He swept his right hand over the crowd. They were thrusting their fists toward the sky and chanting, “To-wers! To-wers! To-wers!” Corgos winked at Kovax. “What do you say, cuz? She’ll fall in love with you all over again. And the boy? He’ll worship you, and rightfully so. We’ll be the rulers of every last piece of land in this realm.”

  He let out a grizzly laugh. Soft blue light illuminated his face from below. It went away as Kovax let the sphere fade to nothing.

  “Don’t talk about Samara,” Kovax said, giving Corgos a stern look. “Or my son.”

  Corgos peered at his cousin through a suspicious half smile. Though a head shorter, he weighed three times as much as Kovax. His hair fell to his shoulders in silky brown curls, the result of daily treatments with rare oils and essences imported from Ayrtoros. Emperor Corgos loved his hair and his beard, which he kept perfumed and powdered, but not as much as he loved women, drinking, and gambling.

  He put his hand on Kovax’s shoulder. When he smiled at him, as he inevitably did at that moment, his eyes twinkled as if he were drunk—but there was something cruel in them as well.

  “Don’t be so glum, cuz. With your Tower of Light, you’ll wake that wife and son of yours, and with my Tower of Dusk I’ll get my superweapon. Then we’ll have it all. No one will ever stand in our way again.” His lips curled into a snarl and his hand tightened on his cousin’s shoulder. A violent gleam came into his eyes. “All you have to do is find a way to get more of those crystals. How hard can that be?”

  “Harder than you think,” Kovax said, glowering back at the man. Kovax was not intimidated. He remembered back when Corgos had been a fat, pimply faced Humankin who had begged his older Savant cousin to mix some sort of potion, or weave some sort of spell—anything!—that would get him a date to the Theus Academy Ballare.

  “Now, now, cuz. You’re the most powerful Savant in the empire. I believe in you.”

  Kovax found himself gritting his teeth. If he could get his hands on those Banks twins, he could use their blood ether to become as powerful as a god. Things in the Leonaryx family would certainly change after that. But he needed somewhere to store all that power, and crystals of that variety were hard to come by.

  “I need more resources,” Kovax said. “The mining process is killing too many of our men. We’ll need to build machines.”

  “No,” Corgos said. “We’ve done enough to keep those blasted Ayrtorian machines off Taradyn. I’m not going to give in now. Besides, we’re stretched thin as it is. You’ll get as many men as you need to mine those crystals. And once my Tower of Dusk is operational, you can start with your precious Tower of Light. You should be thanking me for giving you that much.”

  Kovax gave a stiff bow. “Of course. I am most grateful, Highness.”

  Corgos patted his cousin’s shoulder, turned and stepped out onto the balcony so he could gaze over his adoring crowd. He lifted one stubby arm as high as it would go, then made a tight fist and shook it. His laughter could be heard over the deafening cheers.

  Kovax turned and headed toward his personal chambers, strategizing the entire way. He couldn’t use a sightstone to find those children. Thus far, that method had proven useless. He would have to get someone to find them the hard way, with good, old-fashioned torture and intimidation.

  He knew just the right man for the job.

  Chapter 26

  The carriage landed in the human realm—home sweet home, Milo thought cynically—as the sun peeked its brilliant head above the horizon. Except for the gusting of a cold morning wind, the countryside was dead silent.

  Milo went to where his father had died, and suddenly stopped. Tears shot up around his eyes.

  “No,” he said.

  They had torn his father’s tree from the earth, leaving nothing but a gaping, brown hole.

  Emma covered her mouth. She turned and bent over as her stomach cramped. Milo held her and made shushing sounds to calm her down. He tried to stop his own tears from flowing but couldn’t.

  Ascher was at their side a moment later.

  “I’m sorry, kids. No one should have to see something like this.”

  Ascher’s men landed in a separate carriage. They searched the ground for the beacon crystal. One of the men found it and shouted, “Here!” Milo ignored him. He pictured Kovax supervising a group of Berserkers as they pulled his father from the ground, roots and all.

  A soldier handed Ascher the beacon crystal. He turned it in his fingers, studying it before handing it to Milo. Then he lowered himself onto one knee and put his hands on the twins’ shoulders.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Other than this: don’t lose hope and don’t give in to the anger you must be feeling. Your father was a hero of
legend. He knew what he was doing. He made many sacrifices to keep the two of you safe, and so did your mother. She doesn’t want you to come after her. She would rather have you”—he looked at Milo—“take care of your sister and stay out of harm’s way. She would rather have you survive this ordeal than risk everything and die.”

  Milo avoided looking into Ascher’s eyes. He wanted to push the man’s hand off his shoulder and tell him he was wrong, wrong about hiding and surviving. They had to fight back, had to rescue their mother from torture.

  “Right now the war with the rebels is at a standstill. It’ll be a few years before anything changes. In that time, you should learn how to use your powers.” Ascher took his hands off their shoulders and rose. “Both of your parents were demigods, and so are the two of you—half human and half god. You could be more powerful than any of the Godkin on Astros. Someday, you could be more powerful than your parents ever were. Do you understand what this means?”

  Milo looked down at his feet. Emma lifted her face and gave Ascher a stern look.

  “It means we can’t run forever,” she said.

  Ascher nodded and looked at the beacon crystal Milo held in a tight grip.

  “Whatever happens,” he said, “one of you should have that crystal on you at all times. Don’t leave the house without it. As long as one of you keeps it safe and charged, both of you will be protected by its magic. Without it, the emperor’s low mages will use sightstones to seek you out.”

  Milo looked up at Ascher. “What about the magician at the ranch?”

  “Probably harmless.” Ascher turned and observed his men and the carriage. “I wouldn’t worry about him. Come on, let’s get going.”

  He started toward the carriage, looking like a walking tent in his multicolored cloak.

  “He’s lying about the magician,” Emma told Milo as they followed. “He has an idea who he is, but he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to tell us yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s just as afraid as we are.”

  Chapter 27

  Milo had been sitting by his bedroom window, looking out at the darkened countryside by candlelight, barely able to see anything as the flame, captured in the glass, twisted and jumped, when a knock sounded at his door.

  It had been three weeks since his trip back to the human realm to find the beacon crystal, and still he couldn’t bring himself to stop picturing the gash his father’s tree had left in the earth, nor could he bring himself to stop fantasizing about the pain he would someday inflict on the men responsible for the harm done to his family. Lately, he’d been thinking way too much about revenge.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  A high-pitched, girly voice. “It’s Lily. I just came to say that I know you’re in love with me, and that’s OK ’cause I looove you, too!”

  Milo rolled his eyes and turned back to the window. “Come in, Emma.”

  Emma skipped into his bedroom, wearing a thick sweatshirt over her pajamas.

  “Was it a dream?” he said, turning to her. She’d been having troubling dreams since arriving, many of which involved watching her mother get stabbed by one of those smoke-dripping black blades. That wasn’t the case with Milo; in his dreams he walked through fire, endless rows of fire, without ever burning up. He loved his dreams.

  Emma stepped within reach of the candlelight. She was not upset or scared, not tonight. Instead, she was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “Milo, you have to come,” she said. “Please don’t say no.”

  He shook his head firmly. “Can’t tonight.”

  “But why not? You’ve barely spoken to anyone in weeks.” She inspected the piles of books lying around his room. “All you do is read these—these manuals on magic.”

  “Ascher’s been shipping them in by carriage,” Milo said, sliding off his chair and stepping over the open books on the floor. “You won’t believe some of this stuff. Like, there are these Savants called ‘Mentalists,’ and they can train themselves to communicate telepathically by sensing luminether activity in peoples’ brains. They can read peoples’ minds and even change what people are thinking!”

  Emma looked bored.

  “And then there’s this whole branch of magic called Necromancy where you can raise the dead, and the International Council of Magical Schools made it illegal to teach like four thousand years ago, and then there’s the…”

  “Eww,” Emma said, crinkling her nose. “Milo, don’t tell me you’re thinking about raising…”

  “No, of course not.” He shook his head. “I’m just saying…”

  “Just checking.” Emma crossed her arms. “Gods, you’re such a nerd.”

  Milo slipped his hands into his pockets, looked down at the open books, and smiled.

  “Once a nerd, always a nerd, I guess.”

  “I had a strange dream tonight,” Emma said. “And then Lily woke me up. I barely remember it.”

  Milo frowned. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not tonight.” She sighed and looked away. “I want to have fun with my friends. They invited us to go to the attic.” Her eyes widened. “They’re going to roast marshmallows.”

  “Marshmallows.” A low groan came from Milo’s stomach. He had skipped dinner tonight to finish reading an interesting chapter from one of his books on luminether manipulation and how it’s affected by an individual’s hierarchy of cognitive functions; in other words, their personality type. He hadn’t actually skipped dinner, he’d just forgotten all about it. Gods, he was such a nerd, but who cares when there’s so much interesting stuff out there to…

  “You’re doing it again!”

  “What?” Milo said.

  “That weird look you get sometimes when you’re not paying attention. Are you coming or not? Oh, and guess what else they’re going to have?”

  “Chocolate?”

  “Soda!” She threw her arms up and smiled so wide her eyes closed. “Barrel knows how to make it.”

  “Of course he does. Barrel can make anything. But can he make chocolate? That’s the question.”

  “Does that mean you’ll come?”

  “I don’t know,” Milo said. “Who’s going to be there?”

  “Everyone. Except chocolate. Sorry.”

  Milo shrugged. “I guess.”

  He followed his sister out of the room and down into a hallway he’d never been in before. It was dark, and cold air swirled around his ankles, chilling him. Emma pulled a cord attached to the ceiling and stepped back as a panel opened and burped out a rope ladder. She motioned for Milo to go first.

  “Here goes,” he said, taking a deep, stabilizing breath.

  He climbed and poked his head into an attic space that was long and bare except for the occasional stack of boxes against the wall. The ceiling was vaulted and had skylights that drew squares of starlight on the floorboards. An enormous, dusty telescope sat at the other end, inclined to look through one of the skylights.

  Milo had never been in a room that felt so mysterious before. And it was quiet, too; so quiet he could hear the floorboards groaning beneath his weight. Lightbugs flashed like multicolored stars. There were pink ones, blue ones, even ones that burst into tiny flames every few seconds. They were everywhere.

  He reached out to touch one of the burning bugs with his finger. It was like touching a lit match.

  “Ow.” He yanked his hand back.

  By then Emma had already entered the room, scooped up the rope ladder, and closed the panel door.

  She waved Milo along. “It’s this way.”

  Milo hadn’t even noticed the structure at one corner of the attic. It was actually a room made up of many stacked boxes, and the only way in and out was through a narrow opening against the wall.

  As he followed his sister inside, he rapped his knuckles against one of the boxes. They were full of something thick and heavy, maybe sand. Whatever it was, it had taken one or more very strong persons to
stack all of these boxes in such a fashion. The work had to have been done with a single purpose in mind: to create a secret gathering place away from the adults.

  Milo felt a chill caress his shoulder blades as he entered. It was part fear and part excitement; he was entering yet another mysterious world, this one small and safe. Orange light burned in the center, surrounded by a half-dozen sitting figures. The light radiated from a fire inside of a large bowl, the flames coming from crystals piled inside.

  Milo recognized the faces around the fire, and as he walked in they all turned and smiled at him. Sevarin was missing. That took a weight off his mind.

  And there was Lily Breezewater, with green and gold feathers behind one ear. She wore a thick brown sweater and white pants tucked into fur-lined boots, and she was sitting Indian-style on the floor along with the others. The group also included Owen and Gunner, dressed comically as hunters in green-and-brown camouflage suits, and Barrel, who looked mysterious sitting beneath all those folds of his cloak. Calista was missing, though Milo wasn’t surprised; she almost never participated in group activities.

  Emma sat down next to Lily.

  “Milo, come here,” she said in a loud whisper.

  They all watched him sit next to his sister. Lily leaned forward and waved at him. The smile she gave him was so wide it made her eyes narrow into slits. Milo’s heart thumped.

  “Hi, Milo,” she said.

  “Hey, Lily.”

  Across from them, Owen and Gunner were having a quiet but intense debate about two famous hunters of a strange creature called an “Elki.” The hunters in question had both become famous at the same time, and Owen and Gunner had each chosen a different one to support. Apparently, one used guns and the other used a broadsword. Owen preferred the gunfighter and Gunner the swordsman, though Milo had no idea what difference it really made. He made a mental note to ask about these Elki creatures later.