Milo sighed. “I feel like a kid in a candy store with his mouth taped shut.”
“That makes sense,” Barrel said, nodding. “It’s not that you can’t do it—you simply haven’t practiced channeling luminether. I could show you a thing or two, but you’re a sorcerer, not a magician. Your power must be harnessed using your faculty of intuition, before you can channel it into the world in any sort of meaningful form. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Milo nodded as if to say yes, but instead said, “Well, sort of.”
“Come,” Barrel said, waving him further into the darkened room. “Sit.”
Barrel spent the next two hours explaining the basic principles of luminether channeling to Milo in a way he would understand. Milo found himself grasping the subject more easily than either he or Barrel had expected. By the end of the lesson, both boys were leaning forward in their seats and whispering like two thieves planning a bank robbery.
“That’s it,” Barrel said. “You can use an image, a sound, or a memory—whatever you want, as long as it’s complex enough to engage your faculty of intuition and simple enough to recall instantly. You could think of grass, as long as you can convincingly imagine what it feels like, looks like, and smells like. Pair that with a spell using conditioning drills and voila—instantaneous spellcasting.”
“And the grass—that’s called a trigger,” Milo said. There was a light sheen of sweat on his forehead. His imagination had never been so stirred. It felt great.
“Exactly. You pair the spell, which is by nature highly abstract, with something concrete that you can remember in the heat of battle. It’s sort of like a mental shortcut. But the hard part is channeling the spell out of your body and into the space around you. If you’re not careful, you could really get hurt.”
“Gotcha,” Milo said, his eyes going blank as he worked his mind around the information. “I would have to not only bring up the spell using the right trigger but also find a way to eject it into the world. It’s kind of like speaking, in a way. My brain converts my ideas into language, which then comes out of my mouth in the form of sounds.” He looked at Barrel. “Right?”
Barrel leaned back, eyes narrowed, lips gathered into a pout.
“You’re right,” he said. “It is like speaking a language. That fireball you cast shows you’re already fluent—now you just have to take the tape off your mouth.”
The next morning, with Barrel’s words playing over and over in his head, Milo got off his bed and made his way to the bathroom to wash up. In that immense, misty room, he swam with the other boys in water that immediately purified his skin. The water was a light, glassy blue and sloshed up onto the tiles as the orphans splashed each other.
“Hey, watch this!” Gunner said, and ran at top speed toward the pool. Milo watched, and for the hundredth time, he noticed the pink round scars all over Gunner’s chest.
Bullet wounds.
Gunner and his family had gotten caught trying to escape from North Korea, ruled by a tyrannical dictator, to find a new life in democratic South Korea when Gunner was only five years old. The soldiers shot at them and killed Gunner’s mother, father, and older brother. One of his parents—he never found out which one—had Astrican ancestors, which was how Gunner had gotten his Humankin inheritance. He was shot eight times by North Korean border guards and made international news when he survived and was out of a South Korean hospital a month later and walking around. That was how Ascher found out about him, and it was Ascher’s job to save orphans that had the blood of the gods in them from the human world.
“I know how being a demigod must feel,” Gunner once told Milo. “In the human world, after I survived that escape, I felt like one.”
At the edge of the pool, Gunner jumped, folded himself into a ball, and landed in the water with a heroic smack. The other boys cheered.
They spent ten minutes frolicking and doing cannonball dives, as was their custom in the mornings. Then the second bell rang, which meant breakfast was in five minutes.
“It’s Sunday brunch,” Owen called out. “Let’s get it before the girls eat it all up!”
Gunner tipped his head back and made a loud honking gasp. It was how he laughed when a joke caught him off-guard. The others giggled at him.
“What?” he said. “I got water in my throat.”
And what a breakfast it was!
Milo caught the aroma before he saw the spread. He and his friends ran down the stairs, laughing and pushing each other out of the way, sandals pounding the carpeted wooden steps. He could already smell sausages and corned-beef hash and the sugary, buttery aroma of pancakes. It was American food, a favorite at the ranch. Emma had taught Coral how to make it.
The room was filled with sunlight and laughter and the sounds of trays and forks and footsteps. The boys ran to the long table at the other end of the room, eager to get their hands on plates so they could load up. There was no table schedule on Sundays, which always sent the orphans scrambling to be first, regardless of the surplus of food. The girls were already serving themselves as this Sunday had been their turn for the early morning shower schedule.
Lily Breezewater turned to Milo.
“Late again,” she said, picking up a cinnamon roll and twisting it around for inspection. “Boys and their pool parties.”
“It makes us hungrier. You should try it.”
“We have our own pool parties during girl hours.”
“Right.” Milo turned his attention to the food. “Decisions, decisions.”
“I shouldn’t eat this,” Lily said, eyeing the cinnamon roll that was now sitting on the corner of her tray. “I’ve been trying to go on a diet.”
“What?” Milo stared at her. “But you’re so—so…”
“I’m so what?” Her eyebrows descended in a look of suspicion.
“Uh—skinny?”
She squinted at him and took a humongous bite out of the roll. “I was only kidding,” she said around a mouthful of dough. “Sheesh!”
Milo watched her walk toward her table. No, he decided, she definitely did not need to go on a diet.
Emma was standing by the table a few feet ahead of him. She leaned over and plucked a red banana out of a basket of colored bananas. There were green ones, blue ones, and even pink ones that tasted faintly of strawberries. Milo’s favorites were the brown ones because they tasted like cinnamon. Emma gave him a warm smile.
“Hey, bro.”
“Hey, sis.” He slid his tray next to hers.
Sunday brunch was always extravagant, but this was something else. In addition to croissants and bread rolls, there were also donuts of every variety: chocolate-covered, stuffed with jelly, or white with powdered sugar; there were also weirdly shaped donuts that looked as though someone had twisted the dough before frying it, and glazed donuts with colored sprinkles embedded into the sugar.
And if that wasn’t enough, at the opposite end of the table sat bowls loaded with fruit of every shape and color—mangoes, melons, grapes, apples, strawberries, blueberries, bananas—along with a variety of fruit unique to Astros, the names of which Milo still had trouble pronouncing. There were also jugs containing juice and cold milk of every thickness and grade.
Further down the table one could find every other kind of breakfast food—all the warm ones Milo had smelled on his way down: scrambled eggs with mushrooms, peppers, and cheese; waffles, on top of which one could pour strawberry sauce and add whipped cream; breakfast meats in a wide metal tray, bacon on the left, sausage on the right; little round sandwiches made with meat, eggs, and cheese that reminded Milo of Egg McMuffins. He was so astonished by the variety of choices that he decided it would be easier to just take a little bit of everything.
“Gods, you eat a lot,” Emma said.
“Yup. Think it’ll make me taller?”
He concentrated on filling three cups with several different types of juice. There were certain ones he liked to mix together, whenever he could get his hands on the r
ight flavors. Standing over his tray with a jug in each hand, he felt like a chemist mixing potions in a lab.
“I wish I could eat that much and not gain weight,” Emma said. “Boys are so lucky.”
“Hey,” Milo said, putting down the jugs, already eyeing the cheesy scrambled eggs. Steam rose off of them and shone in the morning sunlight streaming in through the window. “Do you remember how Dad used to put salad dressing on his eggs? I wonder if they have any of that here.”
“Salad dressing,” Emma said, looking at the eggs and frowning.
“What is it?”
“Six months ago, I had a dream about a man who walked through a wall of fire. He was walking toward me, and he had this ugly red hair and, like, a limp or something. He asked if I liked Ranch dressing. Isn’t that weird?”
“Did you tell Ascher?”
“No.” Emma’s cheeks reddened a bit. “I didn’t want him to worry. Besides, it’s stupid. I mean, come on, Ranch dressing?”
“But Emma”—Milo tightened his grip on the tray—“you have the sight. And the man in your dream said ‘Ranch’ dressing. What if he’s real? What if he knows we live on a ranch?”
Emma avoided his eyes. “There are probably millions of ranches on Taradyn.”
Just then, Milo saw Ascher cross the room going toward the buffet tables. He was wearing one of his colorful, patterned Sunday robes and looking down at the floor and mumbling to himself. When he came closer, Milo saw that his heavy white brows were knitted together in worry.
“Hey, kids,” he said, coming up to their table.
Milo and Emma spoke together. “Hi, Ascher.”
He pulled out a chair and sat. It took him a few seconds to get comfortable. Because of his enormous girth, he had difficulty getting his legs to fit under the table.
“Aren’t you eating?” Milo said, dipping into his scrambled eggs.
“Nah. No appetite today.”
Emma studied the glum look on his face. “Ascher, what’s wrong?”
He released a long, drawn-out sigh. “A group of bandits has been attacking villages and cities along the Taradyn coast over the past six months. One of the attackers is most definitely a Savant who can cast elemental spells—a sorcerer, like Milo. They know my name, and they’re torturing and killing anybody who won’t help them find the ranch.”
“They’re looking for us,” Milo said, forgetting about his food. “I knew it.”
“And they can’t use a sightstone to find us,” Emma said, “because we have the beacon crystal. So they’re doing it the old-fashioned way.”
“Unfortunately,” Ascher said, “I think you’re right.”
Milo felt himself grow smaller in his chair, and colder, like a plant wilting before an oncoming winter storm. His appetite flew away from him.
“What’s going to happen?” he said in a small voice.
“We’re going to leave. All of us. We’ll get off the coast.”
“But I don’t want to leave,” Emma said. “Isn’t there something else we could do? I mean, if they’re looking for us, that means they don’t know where we live. Maybe we could throw them off somehow, or—or…”
Ascher shook his head. “I didn’t bring you two to Astros so you could live in fear for the rest of your lives. If that was the case, I’d hide you on Earth, but even that’s too risky. If I had my way, I’d consult your mother.”
“Wait,” Milo said. “Does the sorcerer have red hair? Because Emma had a dream six months ago about a man with red hair walking out of a wall of fire. He laughed at her and asked if she wanted Ranch dressing.”
Ascher sat back and looked deeply into Milo’s eyes. Then he looked at Emma.
“Are you sure he had red hair?”
Emma nodded. “It was the color of rust, and wavy, and it came down to his shoulders.”
Milo pushed his tray away. He had begun to sweat along the top of his forehead. A vision entered his mind of the ranch being swallowed up by flames.
“A man with long, red hair…” Ascher looked away, captivated by a vision of his own.
Then his face went tight, and the twins could tell he was clenching his teeth. The next word out of his mouth sounded like a cross between a hiss and a growl, the sound a bear might make if it could speak.
“Iolus!”
Chapter 43
The woman and the boy floated side by side in separate tubes.
The bluish liquid gave their skin a morbid, icy tinge. The woman was tall and wispy, the boy skinny, with hands that seemed to dangle from his arms like useless ornaments. Broken lines of bubbles streamed upward, originating from breathing masks that gripped the lower halves of their faces.
“Samara, my dear.”
Kovax touched the glass right over the spot where his wife’s bare feet hung touching at the ankles. The positioning was such that it made her look like a ballet dancer standing on her toes. Her arms floated down by her sides and a mess of brown hair—a rather soft mess in which he had always liked to rub his face—fanned out from her head like a cape, reaching down to the middle of her back.
The boy had inherited his father’s jet-black hair (it had been black in Kovax’s youth, anyway) and his narrow shoulders and gangly limbs. Though his mother was Humankin, the boy had been born a Savant like his father—a sorcerer, no less.
“And you, Kofi,” he said, reaching out to touch the tube holding his son. “I’m sorry I haven’t visited in a while.”
Behind Kovax, the hospital’s medical facility was silent. It was a huge white room with a ceiling that rose past several floors. Metal platforms, also white, ran along the sides, connected by stairs allowing access to various labs and spellcasting rooms. On the ground level, towering machines were scattered all about. The only sound in the room was their incessant humming.
The nurses, doctors, and scientists had left Kovax alone for a few minutes of privacy with his family. The low mage’s eyes were red-rimmed. His skin hung off his face, covered in lines of weariness and age spots resembling flecks of coffee.
“I know I keep saying this over and over again”—he gazed up at his wife, squinting as though looking at a bright star—“but we’re close, my love. Once I get that tower up, once I have all that energy within my reach, I’ll have what it takes to wake you. I just need more time. And I need those twins.” A malicious tone slithered into his voice. “Milo and Emma Banks. The batteries for my Tower of Light. And when you find out what I’ve done, please don’t tell me it was wrong. I remember you said never to spill innocent blood in the name of the greater good, but this time it’s warranted. I swear it’s warranted, and not just to wake you up.” He looked at their son. “You—and Kofi.”
Somewhere behind him, a beep was followed by a hissing sound. He ignored it. He had been hearing that sound for a decade, always while speaking to his wife and son. He hated it because it reminded him of where he was—in a wretched place of imported Ayrtorian machinery that served him where magic could not.
But someday that wouldn’t be true anymore.
“When the time comes,” he told his wife, “you’ll forgive me.”
He got up close to the glass and pressed his face against its cold, sanitized surface. He kissed it, glad that he was alone and the security orbs had been shut down.
“I did it again,” he said. “I summoned a Risen One.” He looked up at his wife and clasped his knobby hands together and begged. “Please don’t judge me. I needed help. I would do this the honorable way, but I just don’t have that kind of strength anymore.”
He closed his eyes, smiling at the next thought that crept into his mind
“Iolus does.”
Chapter 44
The royal bedroom was enormous, the furniture made of Gorbodhel oak, the most expensive wood in the realm, and the rug made of the finest Valestarian wools, handwoven by Feral slaves trained since birth to make such wondrous designs. The lamp by the bed, the silverware on the table, next to several plates of uneaten fruits and c
hocolates, the plates themselves, the handles on the doors and cabinets—all of it was made of gold. The silks that hung from the bed’s canopy were of the finest quality, softer than the hair on an infant’s head. This was luxury fit for a god.
They were still swooning—the two women sprawled out on the massive bed.
“You really know how to treat a woman, Your Highness,” one said. She wore a thin, semitransparent nightgown.
The other woman, dressed in a scanty robe and barefoot, munched on a chocolate-covered strawberry and smiled.
“Mm-hmm,” she said.
Corgos Leonaryx, King of Taradyn and current Emperor of the Nations of Leonaryx, stood at the foot of the bed, wearing a thin red robe that tickled the tops of his pink feet. He grinned at the two women. The admiration in their pretty, jewel-like eyes made him feel like a Sargonaut.
“Don’t get chocolate on the bed sheets,” he said, wagging his finger from side to side. A smile cut across his wide, bearded face. “I’d rather you got it on me instead.”
“Huh huh huh…Hee hee hee…”
The women covered their mouths and giggled. It was more of a tittering sound, one he found charming though a bit annoying.
He couldn’t remember their names. He called them “Blondie” and “Brunette.”
Blondie patted an empty spot on the bed, between her and Brunette.
“Why don’t you come lie down? You look tired. Gee, it must be so hard to be a king!”
“Mm-hmm,” Brunette said, wiping chocolate off her lips. “You should relax, Your Grace.”
Corgos rested his hands on his hips and sighed.
“That may be”—his voice came out deep and rich as if he were making a speech—“but Your Majesty is in no hurry.”
“Hee hee hee…Huh huh huh…”
Now they were rolling around on the bed and laughing. Blondie’s hair, which shone like sunlight spun into thread, had fanned out across the sheets. Brunette’s hair, which gleamed dark brown like the chocolate staining her lips, caught the light as she flipped it over her shoulders.
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