Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1)

by Aaron Buchanan

  Any magic must also be made in a minimum of three—the Greeks realized this and incorporated the theorem into the identity of their goddess, Hecate. The caster’s will was paramount. Besides the Rule of Three to perform spells, there must also be a “battery” to power the spell. Most logomancy worked off of will. Not only is Hecate referred to as the “triple-goddess” and depicted with three faces, but her very name itself infers the Greek word for will. But this was such a matter of concentration and intention, that anyone discovering our magic by accident was virtually impossible.

  “Are there any spells that can be accomplished without writing?” From the sound of the road underneath and the proximity of passing cars, we were in a less-populated area. Joy took the curves at much lower speeds to keep me from falling over or hitting my head. There were no freeways where we were going, no simple ways to get there.

  “There are, I’ve heard. But none from logomancers. Our domain is words.” I did not resume the conversation and Joy seemed content to ruminate on what we already discussed. Or something else altogether.

  “We’re in Athens. The Sun is setting.” Joy broke a silence that could have only lasted minutes. Our destination laid just beyond Athens, New York. The true history of where we were headed is not the type one would find in a history book. Even to me, what Dad told me was one of his taller tales. Even when Athena gave me more information back at Solemn Ages, if not for the source, seemed hardly credible. The area called Trivium had long been sacred land, even to indigenous peoples, though much of that history was lost when those peoples were lost.

  “Okay. Go ahead and pull over and punch in the coordinates she gave you.” She swerved over hastily. Luckily, I was already loosely grasping the door handle and was able to steady myself.

  “Done.” Joy accelerated and I the polite feminine English voice of her phone’s GPS told us to continue on our present route.

  Back at Solemn Ages, Athena escorted us to Shred’s van in what must have been an abbreviated tour of the grounds. She also told the story of this area to us as she did so. When America was still in its infancy, our forefathers invited many of the old gods, though they probably did not realize it. These learned men gave new place-names throughout the colonies, and in doing so, invited the gods by speaking their names.

  “There is only one Athens in the Old World,” the goddess explained. “And that is in Greece. However, in this New World, there are 24 towns named in the city’s honor. That city, is of course, named for me. Whether or not these founders intended to worship me, by honoring my name, they did. They called to me.”

  “When the Greek immigrants came in the 19th century, they settled the village of Athens in New York. I sent my own chosen newcomers as caretakers to them, knowing full well the magical grounds that lie nearby. These new settlers found the triangular crossroads as well-worn paths in the forest, with a small glade in its center. They called their enclave Trivium.”

  It was there that the knowledge my father bestowed upon me took over. Dad said he had only been there once before. He said that over time, the woods were cleared, yet the trivium remained as a meeting place of three roads. The inhabitants of Trivium laid down cobblestones to mark the convergence of the points, as all points leading to it were dirt and sod worn by wagon wheels. The inhabitants took their preservation of the peculiar trivium seriously. They named and renamed the roads; plowed the dirt and paved the roads. All the while, the angles remained a perfect isosceles triangle. Very soon, the village elders installed a false cemetery in the middle of the glade to further protect the area into posterity. The village elders were said to have been buried there, but no one dared to till the earth beneath the trivium and affront the powers that Trivium knew dwelt there.

  By Dad’s account, it was equal parts tall tale and campfire story. What I did know was: the trivium was the most robust focal point for magic in North America. Magic performed there was as potent as one could make in North America. There was something inherent to the earth there that the ancient natives noticed and preserved until they could no longer. I wondered if one were to dig deeply enough, maybe its arcane mysteries would be revealed.

  The addition of Bill’s Quill to the equation also gave me great hope for divining the arithmancer’s location.

  Traffic was light on the road that led out of Trivium, as I heard only a couple vehicles pass us by, and one angrily leapfrog us, honking his or her horn.

  “I just passed the trivium. I’m going to pull into a cornfield I saw right before it to keep the car sort of hidden.” Joy pulled to the shoulder and turned around. She slowed down and I felt the crunching of gravel and loose dirt under the wheels of our car. “BUMP!” she warned.

  “Too late.” My head hit the roof of the car, but was otherwise fine. Maybe such a jolt would even knock my sense of sight back into whack. “How far a walk is it going to be. I’d like to walk without accompaniment, if at all possible.”

  “A few hundred feet back. Manageable. Stick close to the edge of the pavement, you should be fine.” Joy exited the vehicle, cuing me to do the same.

  “I’ve never been here. Tell me what you see.” A few years back I had gotten curious and looked it up on Google Earth. I wanted the landmarks she described to meld with what I already held within my mind. I breathed in the not just cool, but cold air. It was disarming and immediately lost enthusiasm for envisioning the trivium. “Never mind. Too cold.” I stuffed my hands into my scuba jacket—which had, by virtue of its quality craftsmanship survived the steam burns without even the slightest warping—and tried to keep my teeth from clattering.

  “Good,” Joy locked her arm in mine to walk me to the road’s edge. “I was just going to say that it’s a cemetery. That’s about it. Some trees, a field, and a cemetery in the middle of the road. Weird.”

  “Does the triangle look as perfect as I was told?” I asked.

  “Uhm…” she sounded tentative, “yeah, I think so.” We came to the macadam of the road and she let go. There’s a big monument in the middle of the cemetery. Tall, with an obelisk.”

  I tripped.

  “Watch your step,” she advised, surely realizing I could not, exactly, watch much of anything. I could more careful. “The focal point of the cemetery seems to be that monument. It’s weird…”

  “Weird how?” I scuffed my shoe and tripped once more, but recovered quickly enough, Joy didn’t acknowledge.

  “I don’t know. Just doesn’t feel like any graveyard I’ve ever been to in my life. And I’m not just saying that because we know the graves are empty.” Joy’s voice receded behind me, giving me ample room. I just hoped she warn me before I stepped directly into a headstone.

  “How many graveyards have you been to?” I inquired, honestly curious.

  Joy’s chuckle echoed strangely. There was no humor in it. Most people only came to these places one someone died. Even fewer return to visit the lost. Yet, in this place, I felt, too, felt askew; unseen forces at work. “Stop. I’m going to take your arm now through the graveyard.” I obeyed and felt the tugging of my hand set to my side. Joy locked her arm in mine. “Going.”

  I moved slowly, putting my free hand on some of the gravestones. The old, rough surfaces offered me no secrets magically rendered.

  She stopped us. “This monument doesn’t have anything written on it.” Joy let me go and I heard frosty ground crunched underfoot. “No. Nothing whatsoever. It’s, like, eight feet tall. I’d say about four feet across for each of the four sides at the base. Hey, there’s a car coming.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me down. Evidently, I wasn’t bending low enough, because her hand pushed down on the back of my head. I heard a vehicle slow down and take the angle of the road to my right and back toward, I believed, the direction of Trivium.

  “Okay. Let’s do this. Get out the paper,” I instructed.

  “Not going to write directly on the monument?” I heard her tearing paper from a legal pad, despite her question.

  “No. Not
necessary. Besides, I’m writing with the quill. That just wouldn’t work.” I knelt down and felt the paper she placed in front of me. “Put the whiskers in the middle of the paper in front of me. I need you to direct my hand and rotate the paper with each word.”

  Joy placed Bill’s Quill in my right hand. I slid it in to writing position. “I’ll hold the inkwell. One dip per word?”

  “Maybe not even. I think I want to make the triangular pattern line up with the sides of the trivium. Keep that in mind.” In the distance, I thought I heard a car door shut, as if he or she were being trying to be discreet about it. The crunches of the frosty ground and Joy’s steps made me doubt myself and I dismissed it.

  I focused my will and began writing the first word in Latin for find. “Ink?” I asked as I finished.

  “Okay,” she replied and slid the paper slowly, likely taking care to not get the whiskers into the word. I heard the click of the LED keychain she bought back at the strip mall. “Go.”

  I wrote the second word in Greek and once assured the ink was still strong, she turned the paper and I wrote the last word in Sanskrit. “Should be sufficient, I hope.”

  “Grey—it’s not doing anything. The words look right. They follow the angles of the trivium. Wait. The whiskers are changing. Like…disappearing.” Joy sounded shocked.

  “What’s happening?” I asked helplessly, not wanting to move for fear of jostling the spell-paper.

  “They’re changing color. They’ve gone white. Some were gray, but just as many black. Now they’re all white. Clear. Almost translucent.”

  That was not what I expected to hear. “If there is no life in the hairs, then there is none in the body. He’s dead.”

  Simultaneous to the word dead leaving my throat, I heard running and felt myself bowled over in a tackle. As soon as I regained some equilibrium, I had every intention of clawing my assailant’s eyes out!

  “DOWN!” the tackler yelled. I struggled and stopped altogether when I heard the first gunshot.

  Two more shots popped from somewhere distant, with any echoes falling mutely on the trivium. I let myself be pulled, hoping it was Joy doing the pulling, but knowing it wasn’t.

  “JOY!” I screamed. Tears chocked my voice as I screamed it again, desperately: “JOY!”

  “She’s gone!” The man’s voice roared. “I’m sorry! We have to get the hell out of here!”

  I was at a loss; dumbfounded. I’d defeated ogres, occultists, a banshee, all manner of demons, as well as one pissed-off gogmagog while on a working vacation in New Orleans. In that moment, I was helpless. Blind and frozen in panic; seized by the impending grief I knew would soon feel.

  “I’m getting you out of here!” he commanded.

  Something within me snapped into alignment, mentally. “The quill! DO NOT LEAVE IT!” I shrieked.

  More gunshots. Six breaths later, and I heard my would-be savior heavily, chest clearly heaving. “There! Hang on!” he spat. He heaved me over his shoulders in what felt like a fireman-carry and took off at a full spring, using the central monument to cover our run away from the direction of the gunshots. He cut hard enough that I almost fell of his shoulders to his right. He caught me sliding and hitched me back up.

  I had no sense of direction, but felt myself thrown into a vehicle that was not our rental hatchback Chevrolet.

  More gunshots. One struck the vehicle and I thought it ricocheted.

  “DUCK!” the man demanded and I was inclined to listen. The car started and even the back tires seemed mired in wet earth, I felt the vehicle give once it hit the pavement and we were going at top speed away from my apprentice’s body.

  My best friend’s body. This hurt worse than the burns.

  My rescuer let me cry for what seemed like ages. He did not interrupt. He did not console. I found myself crying like I never had. The stranger did not so much as offer his sleeve to dry my face. Of course, I would have never accepted. Meanwhile, the v-neck Joy picked out for me was drenched in snot, spittle, and tears. I had Shakespeare’s quill, but no ID, no change of clothes, no money. I was entirely at the mercy of the man who rescued me.

  Once I had stopped blubbering long enough, I turned off the waterworks long enough to ask, “Who the fuck are you, man?” I took solace in the comfort that he was running the heat. Septembers were not supposed to be that cold. Of that I was sure. “And who was that back there?”

  “This probably won’t bring you much comfort, but you would recognize me. I was working maintenance before…” he began.

  “Devin. The arithmancer.” I pictured his face.

  “Apprentice. Gavin. My actual name is Gavin. And you aren’t supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be back there sitting in your apartment. Binge-watching Gossip Girl or something. Hunting evil spirits. Anything but this.”

  Guilt briefly overtook me as I considered what he said: if we never inspected that air filter in our apartment, Joy would be alive. But, that just wasn’t the way of things. Not for me, at least. “Tell me, you son of a bitch—you tell me what the hell you’re doing here and you tell me why that little girl back there is dead and why we had to leave her!” Just saying the words brought me to boiling. I was shaking with rage and starting to snivel again. Not out of sadness: fury.

  “Calm down, please.” Gavin’s tone was even, soothing even. It neither soothed, nor calmed me. But it did remind me to think through the situation without acting out on my emotions. “You know I’m the arithmancer’s apprentice, then. Well, he’s dead. The arithmancer.”

  “Tolliver is dead. Yes, I’ve learned that.” He had no way how I was able to learn the name and his fate. But I took small pleasure in reminding him that I was more than capable of getting what I needed.

  “Right. Well, Tolliver’s dead. Those people who shot your friend? They murdered my master as well as your friend.” Gavin did not slow down, and only barely did so to take curves. I clutched at the handle on the ceiling. Part of me wondered if he were doing it on purpose.

  “She was my apprentice,” I told him, even if she had just begun. Or, just committed to begin. The study behind the craft she actually began the minute she stepped foot on a college campus.

  “Well, call it fortune if you want, but since she was the one holding at light, they shot her first.” While Gavin’s words were meant to give solace, his tone, his demeanor were stoic. Whoever Gavin was, I already disliked him. His dispassionate manner was not allowing me to swing the pendulum any other way. The fact that he had just saved my life kept me from dismissing him, though. This was the second time this week that saving my life was necessary. The trauma of my predicaments kept the realization from wounding my pride. Still, it was a habit I was planning on kicking very soon.

  Before I could lose myself to another round of misery and sulking, I concentrated on the situation at hand. The two most important people in my life had been murdered over the past two years. I had no reason to think the two were related, but I was beginning to suspect they had to be. A master arithmancer was among the body count. Maybe he was among the last of his kind, like my dad was, to his knowledge, the last logomancer. There could be more, safely resigned to the shadows, but that was where they stayed. If there were more, maybe they had the right idea.

  “Okay, Gavin—why were they there?” I had no way of knowing if he was capable of answering. “We came to find Tolliver. He’s dead, and they killed him. So they’re back there for some other reason.”

  “I’m not sure. Whoever it is, the sniper back there isn’t the one we need to be afraid of. I think he was put there to watch the trivium. Maybe prevent anyone from using it to figure out what’s going on. Maybe, he’s there just to pick off the mages.”

  He coined the English term for us. Arithmancers obviously had less affinity for the history and language of the crafts. “Wait. You guys are the ones responsible for stealing the pyramid in my vault. That means you murdered Apollo!” I accused him, suddenly remembering the events that led me here to
Trivium.

  Gavin said nothing. I hope that meant he felt guilty. A full two or three minutes passed before he replied. “It’s true—I lured him to our flat. He…likes the youthful men like me,” he finally admitted. “But Tolliver wanted Apollo to heal him. Tolliver was afflicted by something we had never seen. We’d been all over the world looking for anything. Threatening Apollo with that pyramid was his last hope.”

  Where did Tolliver receive the notion to look in my vault for his method of coercion? “Gavin, who gave him that idea? To force Apollo to hill him?”

  “It was his…idea?” He hesitated, realizing that there was no possible way the idea originated from Donald Tolliver.

  I never knew Apollo, but an old god past his prime would have seen through a trap, surely? “So, someone came in, killed Tolliver and then used the pyramid to kill Apollo?”

  “Yeah. Exactly, really. I was downstairs, helping to set the trap when…” he explained.

  I interrupted: “Wait—you guys actually planned to, like, bind him there? No way that would have worked,” I demurred.

  “Well, never even got the chance to try. By the time I got up the stairs, both Tolliver’s and the god’s body were engulfed in flame. There was this stench of something I’ve never smelled. Chemicals or something.” The car decelerated and came to a halt. Gavin put the car into park.

  “So, Tolliver’s killer came, killed the only witness—your master—then ran the pyramid through the distracted Apollo. The pyramid seems to be the prize the murderer was after all along.” I clenched my hands. There was something about staring off into the blank blackness of my eyes that helped me to arrange the facts more quickly than I would have otherwise. “Then he set the blaze. Some sort of chemical fire to dissolve the bodies, I’m guessing?”

  A chemical fire would explain how it repudiated the water I sent into the bubble that kept it from spreading.

  Whether or not he could read my expression, Gavin confirmed: “I managed to set up a field around the fire to contain it enough so the neighbors would be safe. We had already cleared everything out. He originally intended to come to Trivium so he could find out where the affliction had come from. I came here anyway, hoping I could find out…something.”