the huntress 04 - eternal magic

by Hall, Linsey

  A hurricane hit my force field, massive wind and rain that nearly blasted a hole in my shield. The collision vibrated up my arms and I nearly lost control of the force field. It held up, but barely.

  “You FireSoul bitch!” the bulldog yelled. He was a weather witch, and I cringed to think of what he’d create next.

  The guards attacked, throwing fire and ice and even a swarm of bees. Each hit the force field and made my arms shake, stealing a bit more of my strength. I couldn’t throw off the dampening charm while trying to hold up the barrier, so I’d just have to hope they’d run out of strength before I did. Then I could lower it, throw off the dampener charm, and blast them with my crazy power.

  But from the way I was shaking, I didn’t know if I’d make it. My vision blacked out for a moment. I stumbled to my knees as more magic hit the force field, but I kept it raised, focusing my eyes on the glittery light of the barrier. I could barely see it through the blindness stealing over my vision as my muscles turned to jelly.

  As my family had said, I had unlimited power, but not the physical strength or practice to wield it.

  A tornado jumped from the hands of the bulldog, a howling cyclone of wind that pulled office furniture into its clutches. My magic faltered.

  I’m a dead woman.

  I chanced a quick glance over my shoulder, wondering if my friends had gotten far enough away. I caught sight of a guard’s face just before he plowed into me, driving me into the carpet.

  I hadn’t shielded my back. My face was pressed into the carpet with the guard pressing a heavy knee into my back. I peered up at the hallway. My force field died, the glittering light fading away entirely, and the rest of the guards surged toward us.

  Prison-strength magic dampening cuffs slammed around my wrists, sapping my power, just as something heavy hit me in the head.

  I blacked out.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  The refrain filled my mind as soon as consciousness woke me from a slumber as deep as death. Flashes of vague memories filled my mind. The bulldog’s guards bundling me up and tossing me in the back of a car. Endless travel. An angry male voice speaking to someone on a comms charm or phone. He’d lost someone. Two someones.

  The bulldog hadn’t gotten Nix or Del! Nor had Victor. My deirfiúr had escaped. A victorious grin stretched over my face as more memories flowed into my mind. Flashes of a stone wall passing by my face as I was dragged down a corridor. Being thrown into a cell and the stone scraping against my skin.

  The memories ended there, and I knew I was in trouble even before I opened my eyes.

  When I did force them open, I wasn’t surprised to see a dimly lit stone ceiling above me. The walls and floor were also stone and the air icy cold. It could have been Victor Orriodor’s dungeon, except for the small window high in the wall. Behind metal bars, the moon gleamed, full and bright.

  No, this wasn’t Victor’s dungeon. That was underground, and there was no moon to see even if there had been a window. The waypoint lacked a moon or sun.

  I was in the Prison for Magical Miscreants. And I didn’t feel an ounce of the fear I’d expected to feel if I ever ended up here.

  No doubt, my situation was bad. I was wearing nothing but a black jumpsuit. No boots, no dagger, not even my dampening charm. Nor the prison-strength magical dampening cuffs they’d slapped on me before knocking me out.

  I climbed off the hard, skinny bed I’d been lying on and grinned as I looked around. I probably looked insane, but I didn’t care.

  If they’d taken my dampening charm and removed the cuffs, they didn’t know what I was. Sure, they might know I was a FireSoul. But they had no idea what I was capable of if they’d been stupid enough to take the charm and cuffs away.

  I touched the wall, feeling for whatever protective spells shrouded my cell. There was a magic dampening spell, of course. No way they’d remove the cuffs if there wasn’t. There’d been one at Victor’s dungeon and at the magical fight club holding cells I’d once rescued Nix and Del from. The spell was standard issue and repressed any magic that the prisoners might possess.

  Idiots. That might have held me once, but no longer.

  I stretched my hands, wiggling my fingers. Power sparked in my veins so much that the cell couldn’t contain it.

  A rustling sound came from the corner of the cell. I peered into the dark, my eye catching movement.

  A fat little rat scurried forward, his dark eyes gleaming. He was white and black, with a friendly look to him. I crouched down and held out a hand, grinning.

  “Hey, little guy,” I whispered. I liked rodents.

  The rat hopped onto my hand and stood on his back legs, pink nose twitching as he met my gaze.

  A flash of an image filled my mind—a man, sitting in a cell like mine, his black jumpsuit ragged—and a voice echoed in my ear.

  “Who are you?” the voice asked.

  The voice had to be from the man in my vision. I tried to focus on his face. I recognized him. The FireSoul I’d seen at the Alpha Council stronghold last month. At that time, they’d been dragging him off to this prison for the crime of being a FireSoul. So this wasn’t a vision, exactly. Was this rat was showing me someone else in another cell here?

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “How are we speaking?”

  “I’m an Anima Mage. The rats do my bidding, exploring for me, speaking on my behalf. You’re holding Rufus. Ralph, his brother, is here with me. We’re communicating through them.”

  I looked at the fat little rat in my hand, then at the skinny guy within my mind’s eye. “You must feed them well.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  I liked this dude already. Anyone who counted rodents among his buddies was a good guy. I’d heard of Anima Mages before. They could force animals to do their bidding, but he made friends with them instead.

  “How are you?” he asked again.

  “I’m Cass Clereaux. I mean, McFane,” I whispered. “You’re the FireSoul who was captured at the Alpha Council.”

  He nodded as if he knew I could see him. “What are you?”

  “I’m a FireSoul, too.”

  “That’s not what they said.”

  “Who?”

  “The guards who brought you here. They said you were a thief, but they didn’t know your name or magical species.”

  “Interesting.”

  “But it’s odd they didn’t say you were a FireSoul.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. Normally we’re their favorite to torment.”

  So, the prison didn’t know what I was? Did that mean the bulldog had kept it a secret? It seemed they didn’t know my name, but they did know what I was capable of. Yet they hadn’t reported that to the prison. Was he running a side job with Victor, while keeping the rest of the Order in the dark about what I was? Things were looking better and better.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “I explore the prison through Ralph and Rufus. They see a lot.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Emile,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Emile. And Ralph and Rufus. We’re going to be breaking out of here soon.”

  His gaze brightened. “Yeah? Were you sent by the League of FireSouls to rescue me?”

  “No, but we’ll manage all the same.” I looked up at the window, at the moon outside. “And I’ll have people coming for me.”

  My friends would find me, if I didn’t escape first. I knew I could count on that.

  “That works for me,” Emile said.

  “I’ll talk to you soon, Emile.” I set down Rufus, and he scurried away, back through the little hole in the wall.

  I stood and looked around my cell. My worst fears had come true. My parents were dead. At least one member of the Order of the Magica knew I was a FireSoul. I was in the Prison for Magical Miscreants.

  But my face wasn’t leaking. There were no tears despite the fact that al
l the worst shit had hit the fan.

  Actually, I felt pretty damned good. I was facing my fears, and they weren’t so bad. My deirfiúr were alive and free, and I had a tidal wave of magic flowing through my veins.

  I didn’t know what Victor or the Order had planned for me, but I was going to find out. And if they thought they could keep me locked up in this place, they were too damned wrong.

  I was coming for them. And they’d better be scared.

  THANK YOU FOR READING!

  Want to find out how Cass and her deirfiúr got the money to start their shop? Sign up for my newsletter to get an exclusive copy of Hidden Magic, which is only available to subscribers.

  The next book will be out in September, so keep an eye out!

  Reviews are so helpful to authors. I really appreciate all reviews, and if you’d like, you can leave one on Amazon.

  If you’d like to know more about the inspiration for the Dragon’s Gift series, please read on for the Author’s Note.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I hope you enjoyed reading Eternal Magic. I love writing these books, because they combine my two lives—that as a writer and as an archaeologist.

  As with my other stories, Eternal Magic features historical sites. In fact, this one probably features more than any other. In some places, I try to stick very close to history. In others, I make things up. So if you’re interested in knowing what was real and what wasn’t, read on.

  First, the pyramid. This was based on my own personal research into Egyptian Pyramids and also on the knowledge provided by my friend, archaeologist Veronica Morris, who has worked on Egyptian archaeological sites. Considering that all my research was done via computer and she’s actually worked on the sites, she provided all the really good stuff :-)

  The treasure room was based on King Tut’s tomb, which was discovered in 1922 and was filled with furniture, ornate boxes, and many artifacts. The Bastet statue she found was made of alabaster, the most common material for carved depictions of Bastet.

  Of the boobytraps that Cass and Del faced, the hematite powder and razor wire may have been actual Egyptian booby traps. When the Bahariya Oasis tomb was explored by archaeologists in 2001, they found an eight-inch thick layer of hematite powder at the sarcophagus. I was only able to find one (not very good) reference to razor wire being used in pyramids, so it could be totally fake. It was neat, though, so I thought I’d include it. And I’d rather write the next Cass adventure than do in-depth research to prove that razor wire actually was used, so I leave it up to you to decide if you want to believe it was real or not.

  But by far the most interesting part of Cass’s journey through the pyramid was her adventure with the boat. I’m a nautical archaeologist, so this part is my favorite. Several boats have been found buried at pyramid complexes. The boat that I used as particular inspiration for this scene was the Khufu ship, which was buried in a pit in the Giza pyramid complex around 2500 BC. The exact purpose of the boat is unknown, though it may have been meant to carry the resurrected Khufu to the afterlife. The dead may have also possessed magical items to defend themselves against dangers on the way.

  Everything that I wrote about Cass’s boat was taken from history (except the magical river:-)). There actually were symbols carved into the wood of pyramid boats to help with the reconstruction, just like a shelf from Ikea comes with stickers to indicate which side of the board goes where. The timbers were lashed together with ropes, and the planks even had roughly jagged edges that helped avoid slippage. This jogged-plank feature was found on the Abydos boats, discovered in 2000, rather than on Khufu’s barge, but it was such a neat feature that I had to include it. The little chips of wood that Cass and Del left on the floor because they couldn’t figure out where they belonged were actually tenons, little pieces of wood that fit into slots called mortises in order to keep the planks nicely lined up and firmly in place. For Cass’s purposes, the boat still would have worked, though you wouldn’t want to go to sea in a boat that didn’t have them if it was supposed to.

  The riddle that Cass and Del had to answer to get past the Sphinx was an old (and I mean old) Sumerian riddle, one of twenty-five found inscribed on a clay tablet discovered at Sumer, the southernmost region of the ancient Mesopotamia, which is now modern day Iraq and Kuwait. The tablet was dated to the 18th century BC (see? Super old). I’d have chosen an Egyptian riddle, but I couldn’t find one.

  The enchanted Celtic cauldron that Victor Orriodor stole was based on the Gundestrop Cauldron, a silver, Iron Age artifact that was found in a bog in Denmark. Specifically, it was part of the La Tene culture and was most likely laid in the bog as a sacrificial item between 150-1BC. I’ve always loved Celtic history and I was lucky enough to see the cauldron on a research trip to Denmark and Ireland, so I wanted to include it in the book. Any place that I can slip in real history or artifacts, I like to do so. Check out my Pinterest Page (under Linsey Hall) for pictures of this ornate, beautifully decorated cauldron.

  The Lyceum of Metis is an entirely made up place, of course, but the origin of the name is interesting. A lyceum is an educational institution and the name is actually a Latin version of the Ancient Greek word Lykeion. Metis was one of the ancient Greek titans. In the fifth century BC, during the height of Greek philosophy, Metis was considered the mother of wisdom.

  The passage tomb that Cass visited to find out about her past is based on two passage tombs that I visited in Ireland as part of research. Newgrange, the largest one, and Cairn T at Loughcrew, were both well preserved examples of these tombs and it was possible to enter them, which was really quite amazing considering that they are as old as the pyramids. As I wrote in Eternal Magic, the tombs often had a big stone blocking the entrance that one had to climb over (both of the tombs I entered were easier to access). The exterior stone was decorated with swirling stone carving and the interior stones in the main chambers were often carved with swirls and flowers. There were stone basins within the small interior rooms, which contained bones and artifacts when the tombs were originally excavated. But the most amazing part was the light that shined through the light shaft at solstice. I wished I had seen the real thing, but the reproduction that I experienced was amazing in itself and I just had to include it in a book.

  That’s it for the historical and archaeological sites featured in Eternal Magic. But one of the most important things about the Dragon’s Gift series is Cass’s relationship with the artifacts and the sense of responsibility she feels to protect them. I spoke about this in the Author’s Note for the other books in the series, so this part might be repetitive for some folks (feel free to quit now if so), but I want to include it in each of my Author’s Notes because it’s so important to me.

  I knew I had a careful line to tread when writing these books—combining the ethics of archaeology with the fantasy aspect of treasure hunting isn’t always easy.

  There is a big difference between these two activities. As much as I value artifacts, they are not treasure. Not even the gold artifacts. They are pieces of our history that contain valuable information, and as such, they belong to all of us. Every artifact that is excavated should be properly conserved and stored in a museum so that everyone can have access to our history. No single person can own history, and I believe very strongly that individuals should not own artifacts. Treasure hunting is the pursuit of artifacts for personal gain.

  So why did I make Cass Cleraux a treasure hunter? I’d have loved to call her an archaeologist, but nothing about Cass’s work is like archaeology. Archaeology is a very laborious, painstaking process—and it certainly doesn’t involve selling artifacts. That wouldn’t work for the fast-paced, adventurous series that I had planned for Dragon’s Gift. Not to mention the fact that dragons are famous for coveting treasure. Considering where Cass got her skills, it just made sense to call her a treasure hunter (though I really like to think of her as a magic hunter). Even though I write urban fantasy, I strive for accuracy. Cass doesn’t engage in
archaeological practices—therefore, I cannot call her an archaeologist. I also have a duty as an archaeologist to properly represent my field and our goals—namely, to protect and share history. Treasure hunting doesn’t do this. One of the biggest battles that archaeology faces today is protecting cultural heritage from thieves.

  I debated long and hard about not only what to call Cass, but also about how she would do her job. I wanted it to involve all the cool things we think about when we think about archaeology—namely, the Indiana Jones stuff, whether it’s real or not. Because that stuff is fun, and my main goal is to write a fun book. But I didn’t know quite how to do that while still staying within the bounds of my own ethics. I can cut myself and other writers some slack because this is fiction, but I couldn’t go too far into smash-and-grab treasure hunting.

  I consulted some of my archaeology colleagues to get their take, which was immensely helpful. Wayne Lusardi, the State Maritime Archaeologist for Michigan, and Douglas Inglis and Veronica Morris, both archaeologists for Interactive Heritage, were immensely helpful with ideas. My biggest problem was figuring out how to have Cass steal artifacts from tombs and then sell them and still sleep at night. Everything I’ve just said is pretty counter to this, right?

  That’s where the magic comes in. Cass isn’t after the artifacts themselves (she puts them back where she found them, if you recall)—she’s after the magic that the artifacts contain. She’s more of a magic hunter than a treasure hunter. That solved a big part of my problem. At least she was putting the artifacts back. Though that’s not proper archaeology (especially the damage she sometimes causes, which she always goes back to fix), I could let it pass. At least it’s clear that she believes she shouldn’t keep the artifact or harm the site. But the SuperNerd in me said, “Well, that magic is part of the artifact’s context. It’s important to the artifact and shouldn’t be removed and sold.”