Spellweaver

by Tamara Grantham

  Waiting for the princess to return, my imagination ran wild as I came to terms with the truth of this place. It must have been built thousands of years ago, before the sky king, before Pa’horan, when elves were bloodthirsty and war was a way of life. They built this temple—or more appropriately, laboratory—for the purpose of experimentation on elves who used gray magic and manipulated liquid elements. After transforming their subjects and being still unable to find the source of their powers, they must have shipped the survivors back to the mainland and forced them to live in the most desolate place on the planet—the Northlands. The elves renamed them goblins after that, most likely to hide and aid in destroying the knowledge of what had happened in this place.

  At some point, the elves had manipulated history. How were they able to do it?

  The Gravidorum. It was their express duty to keep all knowledge of this very place hidden. And now we were here to destroy it—further erasing all evidence of the past.

  The princess’s footsteps echoed, and soon she returned. She gave no explanation of her previous whereabouts, although I couldn’t mistake the look of desperation on her face.

  “I was unable to locate that which I sought,” she said. “This is troubling indeed, but I dare not delay our quest any longer. Follow me. We must make haste to the second gate.”

  We entered the hallway once again, where we followed the beam of enchanted silver light as it led us deeper into the fortress.

  Princess Euralysia walked through a large, arching doorway, and we followed. The hall widened into a round room surrounded by marble pillars. In the room’s center sat another silvergate. It looked similar to the first, but instead of a moon-shaped symbol on top, we found a symbol in the shape of a five-pointed star.

  The princess quickly removed another Illumina crystal from her necklace and handed it to Kull.

  Something moved behind us. Kull unsheathed his sword.

  A translucent, white-robed figure moved from the shadow of one of the pillars. My heart rate quickened as I stared at its grayish form, its wispy robes moving on a phantom wind. It had no discernable pupils. Instead, its eyes shone with a grayish glow. It had the face of a goblin.

  It moved toward me, it eyes locked with mine. Gray magic encircled me. Icy bands wrapped my ankles, my wrists, pinning my arms to my sides. The inky magic entered my lungs and stole my breath.

  I tried to cry out, although the magical fog muffled my voice, and I only managed a gasp. My vision clouded. Before the darkness overtook me, I saw Kull and the princess rushing toward me, and then my world went black.

  ***

  “You are in danger here, Earth dweller,” the strange voice whispered in my mind.

  When I opened my eyes, I found that I floated, weightless, in the gray mist. The spirit creature drifted before me, its eyes piercing and glowing white.

  “Where have you brought me?” My voice sounded as if I spoke in a drum. I tried to move but found I had no control over my body.

  “You are safe for now, although once you return to your body, that shall not be the case. You should be wary of those who journey with you.”

  “What have you done? Why have you captured me?”

  “I merely mean to speak with you.”

  The spirit-goblin’s lips didn’t move as it spoke. It only stared at me with those hollow, blank eyes.

  “In my mortal life, I was called Xanthocus. You may call me that now, if you wish. My spirit is all that remains of the old ones. Once this temple is destroyed, all my knowledge goes with it. The elven one has attempted to destroy this knowledge, but I cannot allow that to happen. The truth of this place must be preserved. Will you aid me?”

  “Aid you? How can I help you if you’ve stolen me from my body?”

  “It was necessary in order to preserve the truth. Even now, as we speak, the elven one tears my spirit apart. What is left of my essence will not exist much longer.”

  I almost pitied the thing, but could I trust it? “How do I know you aren’t tricking me? Was it you who distorted my friends’ minds?”

  “It was I. It has been the nature of my kind to protect this island. We only wished to preserve our history. I am sorry if I have caused harm. It was not intended.”

  I stared at Xanthocus. “Were you a goblin?” I asked.

  “No, I was never called by that name. We were the gray elves once, called for the magical color we possessed. We were a peaceful species, living our lives in the One Tree that once towered on the mainland, where the magic took root.”

  “You lived in the Ever Root?”

  “Yes, long ago, when it was a flowering tree—alive, a sight that inspired—a spiritual place of pure magic. It was our home until the wyldern elves took notice. They were not like us, for they craved power and wished to take our magic for themselves. They destroyed our tree, and those who survived, they captured. Eventually, they brought us here to this island, where the magic aided them in manipulating our bodies.

  “They called us goblins and destroyed the history of our kind, instead recreating it until none knew the truth.”

  Xanthocus held out his hands, where a scroll appeared. “The elven one wished to remove this single parchment from the tomes in this temple, for it is the last testament of our people, and it tells the truth of what happened to the gray elves. But I have hidden it from her.

  “I entrust this scroll to you. I have prepared it so you will find it when the time is right, and so the elven one will never be able to touch it. Will you accept this sacred duty? Will you protect the knowledge of my people?”

  His words were deep, yet soft. I knew I had to accept his challenge, yet protecting the knowledge of an entire race of people would be a daunting task. But, if I didn’t do it, then who would?

  “I will protect it,” I finally answered.

  He nodded. His goblin’s face revealed no emotion as the scroll disappeared, and then he, too, vanished.

  “I entrust the history of the gray elves to you, Earth dweller,” his voice echoed.

  ***

  Gasping for air, I awoke. Chaos reigned around me. Kull’s shouts were broken up by the princess’s panicked voice. Kull was giving me compressions, and I feared he would break my ribs if I didn’t stop him. I grabbed his wrists. Although I couldn’t speak, I did my best to pry his hands away.

  “Stop!” I finally managed.

  Kull’s eyes opened wide, dark blue in the silver light. “Olive?”

  “I’m fine,” I gasped. “Please, just help me up.”

  Relief filled his eyes as he helped me sit up. When he hugged me to his chest, I once again feared for the health of my lungs. The princess loomed over us, her face pale and drawn with worry.

  “Are you sure you are all right?” Kull asked.

  “Yes, I’m certain. You can release me.”

  He pulled back. “Did I hurt you?”

  I rubbed my breastbone. Possibly bruised, but at least my lungs were still working. “I’m okay.”

  “What happened?” the princess asked.

  I stared up at her, feeling a sense of revulsion from the knowledge Xanthocus had just imparted. Her people were responsible for the suffering and eradication of an entire race, and now she was trying to erase that knowledge forever. But in order to protect the history of the gray elves, I couldn’t let the princess know what I had learned.

  I shook my head and stared at the silvergate, where the second crystal shard peeked from the top. “Nothing,” I finally answered. “I blacked out and don’t remember much afterward. You placed the second Illumina crystal in the gate?”

  “Yes,” the princess answered. “After Kull placed it in the gate, the creature disappeared. I can only assume it was trying to stop us from destroying this place, which is why I feared it had killed you in an attempt to keep your powers from affecting the silvergate’s spell.”

  Kull squeezed my hand. “But you are all right?”

  “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.
”

  “Very well,” Princess Euralysia said.

  Kull helped me stand up, and the princess led us to the silvergate.

  “Do you feel well enough to use your powers?”

  I inhaled, feeling my Earth magic inside, steady, but slow. “Yes, I believe so.” As I had done earlier, I removed the orb and placed my hands on the smooth, round stone. Now that I knew what to look for, removing the spell was easy enough to do. Once I felt the magic move from the stone and into the shard, I backed away.

  A focused beam of silver light pointed in the direction of a door across the room. As I replaced the orb in my bag, I followed Kull and the princess out of the chamber and into a hallway where the light shone, pointing the way down another dark hallway.

  I held my pack close, feeling the weight of the orb inside.

  Kull and I followed the princess through one hallway and into another, following the light as it refracted from mirror to mirror, pointing the way. Without it, I was sure we would have lost our way ages ago.

  Up ahead, I was surprised to see actual sunlight illuminating our path. When we rounded the corner, I found the reason. The hallway abruptly ended at an enormous crater. It looked as if someone had dropped a bomb on the fortress. We stopped at the end of the hall to find a sand-filled hole spreading before us. Large building stones and busted bricks lay haphazardly in the open chasm.

  “What happened here?” Kull asked. “And where do we go next?”

  The princess sighed. “This is unexpected.”

  Above us, the sky was cloudless and blue. Shielding my eyes against the sun, I noticed that the daylight outshone the silver beam, although I suspected it didn’t matter anyway. Wherever we were supposed to go had obviously been destroyed, and the silvergate would have most likely been destroyed along with it.

  “What should we do now?” I asked.

  “We must descend into the crater and search for the final silvergate,” the princess answered.

  “Do you think it will still be intact?”

  “Spells were in place to ensure its protection. It should be well-preserved, although finding the gate may prove troublesome.”

  “But who would have destroyed it?”

  “Any number of creatures could have been responsible” Kull said. “The ore dragons, perhaps, or any other species who felt threatened by the fortress.”

  “But I thought the silvergates protected the fortress. How could someone destroy a portion of the fortress with the silvergates intact?”

  “Perhaps someone found a way past the spells. Do you detect any enchantments?” the princess asked me.

  Stepping to the edge, I held out my hand, letting the magic speak to me. As I closed my eyes, an amber glow encircled me. Its brightness was so strong that the spell couldn’t have been old, and there was an enormous amount of power in the spell. Who could have created such an enchantment?

  “It’s Earth magic,” I said, confused.

  “It makes sense,” Kull said. “The only magic anyone would be able to use is Earth magic, so who used it? Does it feel like a recent enchantment?”

  “Yes, it isn’t very old. It’s possible that whoever destroyed it is still here.”

  I opened my eyes to find the princess staring over the ledge with a worried expression. “He has beaten us here.”

  “Who?”

  “Geth,” she answered.

  “You think Geth is here?”

  “Yes, I believe he found his way here before us.”

  “But Geth doesn’t use Earth magic.”

  “We know there was a goblin infiltrator aboard our ship,” Kull said. “And I am certain that we have been trailing someone, although I cannot say who it is. However, I would also wager that Geth is the one most interested in the magic of this place.”

  “Perhaps,” I answered, not convinced, “but why would he have remained in hiding for so long? Why not just blow us up and the ship along with it?”

  “Because I believe he wants us to restore the magic,” the princess answered.

  I scrutinized her. So many things didn’t add up. “You believe he wants to restore the torture?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that makes no sense. He destroyed the magic. Why would he want us to restore it? And you still haven’t answered my other question. Geth doesn’t use Earth magic, so it couldn’t have been him who wrecked this place. Someone who wields Earth magic is responsible.”

  “Not necessarily,” the princess answered. “Can you detect any other magic at play?”

  Once again, I stretched out my hand. At first, I saw only the amber glow, but when I concentrated harder, I found a tiny spot of black at the canyon’s bottom, which indicated that someone with black magic had been there recently.

  “Black magic.” I opened my eyes and pointed to the spot where I’d felt the magic. “It’s there.”

  “Then it is very likely that Geth is waiting for us,” the princess said.

  “But why would he wait for us? What are his intentions?”

  “We won’t have our answers unless we find out more,” Kull said. “We must travel into the crater to find our answers, although unfortunately, I feel as though we are being led into a trap.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “Yet we must restore the magic,” the princess said, “and there is no other way to bring the magic back except by destroying this temple.”

  We stared into the crater as the wind stirred the sand. Its dry whisper sounded loud in my ears. If Geth waited for us, there was nothing any of us could do to stop him. Euralysia still had some lingering magic, but it was nothing compared to what Geth possessed. Kull’s sword could take off the man’s head, but only if Kull could get close enough. My Earth magic was the strongest defense we had, but I knew it was nothing compared to Geth’s black magic.

  My only hope was that we were wrong and someone else had created the crater. Someone else who used black magic. But who? Except for the Regaymor, I knew of only one other person who possessed black magic, and my mother was millions of miles away and on another planet. At least, that’s what I believed.

  Whether Geth, the Regaymor, or my mother, this situation didn’t look good.

  “We should head to the dark area that Olive saw,” Kull said. “If someone tampered with the last gate, and they used magic to do it, then we need to find the last place they used it.”

  “Fine,” I answered. “I’d like to know who’s down there.”

  “Agreed,” the princess said.

  A stone-littered path sloped in front of us. We picked our way over the broken bricks and mortar. As we did, the sun sank toward the horizon, casting the dark sand in an orange glow. The sun felt strange on my skin. Instead of warming me, it made goose bumps form.

  Odd. Was I catching a fever? Or was this a side effect of the Earth magic having been released?

  Focusing on the black magic, I took a path that dipped toward the crater’s center. As we descended, we avoided large, crumbling towers and massive chunks of stone. The steepness of the slope, coupled with the shifting sand, made it impossible not to slip. I held to the rocks for balance.

  The wind picked up, and I tasted its grittiness on my tongue. The sun dipped lower, and soon a few stars dotted the evening sky.

  Night descended as we reached the crater’s floor. Black blast marks streaked the rocks near the pit’s center. As we walked to the middle of the area, my chill grew worse and my stomach grew queasy.

  We scanned the area. Kull inspected a large stone that was half-buried in the sand. The princess knelt beside a mirror that had broken into hundreds of pieces. Smashed glass vials, tubes, and broken wires were scattered around the area.

  “Can you tell where the source of the magic is?” Kull asked.

  I paced the area, letting my magic guide the way. The amber glow surrounded everything, brighter than I’d expected. My boots crunched over broken glass and rocks. I stopped at the foot of what had once been a massive, square-sha
ped tower that lay haphazardly on its side. Placing my hand on the wall, the rough, sunbaked stones warmed my skin. Immediately, I felt the dark magic’s power inside.

  “It’s in here,” I said.

  Kull and the princess stood close. We searched for an entrance into the tower, but found nothing but thick stone held together with crumbling mortar.

  Kull unsheathed his sword. “Bloodbane will make quick work of this,” he said, smiling.

  It had been a while since I’d seen him smile. This journey had him more wound up than I’d realized, and I suspected I must’ve looked just as apprehensive as he did.

  He jammed his blade between the stones where the mortar was broken. The sounds of scraping and crumbling echoed through the crater as Kull dislodged the stones. After removing a portion of the mortar, he placed his sword aside and stuck his fingers through the opening. Straining against the stone, he leveraged it back and away from the tower.

  I sidestepped the large stone to stare inside the cracked, domed room, where I found the crushed and almost indistinguishable remains of the final silvergate.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “What do we do now?” I asked, my voice bouncing around the tower.

  Kull and the princess stood beside me as we inspected the ruined silvergate. The rounded ball portion had been cracked in several places. Large chunks had come loose and fallen to the sand-covered ground around it. The opening on top had also cracked in half. This gate had what appeared to be a sun-shaped piece that would have fit on top, but now, it was warped and blackened, making it impossible to place the princess’s crystal inside the silvergate’s opening.

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Princess Euralysia spoke with a soft voice. “It shouldn’t have been possible. The silvergates were made to last centuries—until the end of time. This can’t be possible.”

  “Surely there’s something we can do,” I said. “Isn’t there some way to repair it?”

  “Repairing it is not possible,” she said, swallowing hard to keep from crying. “The gates were created with the five magics of Faythander, and also with Earth magic. To repair it, one would need all five magics, and with the magic so weakened, that would be impossible.”