“What changes do you propose?” he asked.
“Our plane of existence is very different from yours. I have experienced yours a handful of times before, but it has been generations since the last time I was called. I am inquisitive by nature, and I desire to know more. If we reforge the Contract, I would be able to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel through you. You would be unaware of me but for my telling you. I would not be able to control or influence you, I would simply observe. In exchange, I would waive many of the summoning requirements and lend you a select few of my magical abilities. I have given you a sampling of this already.”
“The bird.” Esset caught on immediately. “It looked different, and it flew much faster. It was more obedient, too. I was so tired that it should have tried to disobey me several times, but it didn’t try at all.”
“Indeed.” The phoenix inclined her head, acknowledging his observations. “There are others as well. I will leave you to discover the particulars. As before, you will glean knowledge from your tome.”
“And this fire that I can’t control? Is that you too?” Esset asked.
“Hm, yes. It appears your lack of inborn magical ability is causing some problems in that quarter. Unfortunately I can do nothing about that. It is part of the terms. However, there are likely measures you can take to control it.” The phoenix sounded unapologetic.
“Are those all the terms?” Esset inquired.
“No. The final terms are these; when you see the symbols for my summoning incantation, you must call me without delay. Beyond that, I am not available to be summoned any longer. Clearly, any past cost associated with calling on me will also be revoked,” the phoenix replied.
Esset considered that; this was all so much more than he’d expected. It wasn’t ideal, but what was? He disliked the idea of being watched—or watched through—all the time, but this would give him the chance to help Toman. Maybe he could even pull off a rescue.
“Will you also be reading my mind?” Esset asked.
“Your thoughts, no. Your emotions I will be able to sense.” The phoenix spoke without emotion, like she was commenting on the weather. Esset shifted uncomfortably. Her answer was better than it could have been, but worse than he’d hoped.
“I’m still not sure what you’re getting out of all of this,” Esset said. Less than ideal or no, he was getting a whole lot of power and the phoenix didn’t seem to be getting much at all.
“What motivates me is different than what motivates you, but I still would have thought you, of all people, would understand. You are a scholar, after all,” the phoenix said, blandly.
“How so?” Esset asked.
“What would you give to see my world?” the phoenix asked.
Esset was taken aback. “A lot. But still…”
“The power I lend you is not so great a power in my world, nor often used. Additionally, opportunities to see this world are brief and rare in the order of centuries. Do not undervalue what you are offering me,” the phoenix replied.
“I see,” Esset said. There was a brief silence as he considered her response before asking another question.
“How long are these new terms in effect for?”
“Indefinitely,” the phoenix replied.
“Might the terms be renegotiated in the future?” Esset inquired.
“Such is not impossible.”
“And if I need to speak to you?” Esset wanted to know.
“You should not.”
“But if I do?” Esset pressed.
“I will be observing through you. Make the fact known and if I decide to, I will bid you to summon me,” the phoenix finally replied. Esset nodded.
“And if I refuse these changes in the contract?” Esset asked.
“You are indebted to me,” the phoenix replied. She didn’t sound angry or offended; her tone was still neutral.
“I know. But if I refuse?” Esset pressed. He wanted to know if he truly had a choice.
“That is your prerogative.”
“But the cost?”
“Your indebtedness will continue,” the phoenix replied. Esset wasn’t sure if he should press further—the phoenix was quite inhuman in its behavior, and it was difficult to tell if she was being duplicitous, or if she was trying to threaten him. He didn’t think so, but that didn’t negate the possibility. Finally he decided not to pursue it, since he had every intention of accepting anyways.
“I accept the terms that you have outlined,” he replied.
“That is wise,” the phoenix replied. Amidst the flames around them, ashen symbols appeared and rotated slowly around the pair. Esset couldn’t read them, but he knew their meaning. Also, thanks to the original Contract ceremony, he knew what to do. He raised his hand in front of himself, palm-out, and spoke.
“I, Summoner Jonathan Esset, accept the modifications to the terms of our Contract. I willingly accept any and all costs associated with my actions, as agreed to therein.”
“We agree to the new terms of the Contract,” the phoenix echoed. The symbols flared through the colors of fire, starting with red and changing through to blue and finally white before vanishing. The flames around them dissipated as the phoenix pulled its wings in close and lost its corporeal form as well, leaving Esset standing on a slightly scorched hilltop, alone.
Esset just stood there for several minutes, adjusting to the massive changes to his world. Two years of his life were still gone, and he still didn’t know what had happened to Toman, but now he had a chance to find out, to do something. He had time. He wondered if he would ever take life for granted again. And the phoenix—Esset wondered if she was watching through him right then. He couldn’t tell, but then, she had said he wouldn’t be able to tell. For a moment, his skin crawled, but then he shook himself and promised himself he would ignore it; right now, saving Toman, if he still lived, was the most important thing.
His parents had been watching for him, hoping against hope that he’d come back, so when they saw the bird in the sky, they met him in their small back yard. He’d barely banished the fiery bird when his mother was hugging him again.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” she scolded him.
“I love you too, Mom,” Esset replied, hugging her back and smiling at his father. Then his smile faded as they stepped apart.
“But we have work to do. We need to look into geas spells,” Esset said, looking at his father.
“I sent Toby up to the library with a note for the head librarian to start pulling reference material,” Mr. Esset replied. “We can—”
“No,” Mrs. Esset interjected firmly. “Jonathan, you are resting. You need food, and you need sleep, and then you can go bury your nose in a book. No!”
Esset had begun to object, but his mother stopped him.
“No arguing, I’m not losing my boy to ill health, not after all this. No complaints, no arguing. I’ll catch you up on what you’ve missed, so it’s not like it’ll be a waste of time.”
“Time with you is never wasted, Mom,” Esset replied. Esset couldn’t say no, seeing her spirit back like that.
“Don’t worry, son, I’ll get a good start and bring some of the books back here,” his father said. “I’ll be back before dark. We’ll burn the midnight oil if we need to.”
“Thanks, Dad.” The two men hugged and then the elder of the two headed back into the house to grab his coat and head up to the royal library.
Esset and his mother went inside and she chatted happily, filling him in on everything that he’d missed. Their happiness was tainted by Toman’s missing presence, but for the moment, they were both glad he was home, and Mrs. Esset stuffed her son full of all the food she could prepare.
By the time Mr. Esset returned, Esset had eaten so much he could barely move. He’d already catnapped twice, so he was more than ready to tackle the books that Mr. Esset returned with. They pored over the literature until the small hours of the morning, only stopping to sleep until dawn. Over breakfast, t
hey continued their work until Esset closed his book with a frustrated sigh.
“It seems that the geas is the business of very skilled, very powerful mages, and no one else,” Esset said.
“Mostly, yes,” Mr. Esset replied pensively, finishing the sentence he was on before bookmarking the page and closing his book as well.
“I don’t suppose you know one of those and how to get him or her to help?” Esset asked, rubbing his temples. He knew one mage who might be capable of helping, but even if he could find him, he doubted Erizen could be persuaded to help. He wasn’t exactly the charitable type, and Esset would just as soon avoid the volatile mage. The only other mages Esset could think of were dead or just not powerful enough. Other than that… Well, he knew a few others with magical abilities, but not ones who could manipulate raw magical energies to the extent that would be useful to them now.
“I know of none powerful enough,” Mr. Esset confessed.
“But we’re not done our research yet. We’ve gone through all these books, but I asked Andarus to keep searching the library for more tomes. He may find something yet,” his father added.
Esset rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I guess. Well, I’ll copy out the details from this book just in case. If there’s no other way, then there’s no other way, and we’ll have to find a mage to make this work. Maybe I could find one through Sergeant Warthog.”
“I believe the sergeant has gone underground in case Moloch tried to come after her. At least, that’s what she indicated when she told us…that you were gone.” Mr. Esset avoided his son’s eyes, triggering a surge of guilt from Esset.
“Yeah, she’d said she would, and finding her would be a task…” Esset heaved a sigh. “No, you’re right. Finding someone like her will be impossible if she doesn’t want to be found. If she’s even alive and Moloch didn’t get to her.”
“We’ll find a way,” Mr. Esset assured him.
“Let’s go to the library now,” Esset said, abruptly standing.
“Breakfast!” Mrs. Esset said sharply, giving her son the evil eye. Obediently, he sat and quickly wolfed down the remainder of his eggs and toast. His father followed suit and soon they were up at the library in search of new material.
Esset felt a heavy wave of nostalgia as they stepped into the building that was Sedina’s Royal Library. How many hours had he spent here as a child? Pretty much every single hour that he hadn’t spent with Toman. And a few that he had.
“Andarus?” Mr. Esset called when they entered the cavernous main room. Shelves towered high in numerous aisles. Fancy rolling ladders were attached at the end of each aisle, ready to aid seekers of books at the tops of those shelves.
Sedina’s Royal Library was an impressive collection, to say the least. The city had a great university, and it had always been lauded as a safe place for academic minds to flourish. The university had once had its own library, but given that the building was adjoined to the Royal Library anyways, it had been deemed unnecessary and amalgamated with this one. Approximately half of the library consisted of proper books and tomes; the other half was scrolls and other miscellaneous literature. There was a series of careful catalogues for the books and tomes, but the other half of the library was still undergoing its organization and cataloguing process.
“Andarus?” Mr. Esset called again.
“Over here, Ed!” a distant voice called back. The two Essets rounded the corner and went to the end of the aisle where one of the work stations could be found. Andarus was there with a mountain of scrolls and loose sheaves of paper. A special magelight hovered at his shoulder to illuminate whatever he was looking at. Fire of any sort was forbidden in this den of knowledge, for obvious reasons. Even a minor mage could create a magelight, and since the lights could be affixed to objects that even the non-magical could use, the cost was deemed worthwhile. Convenient though it was, right now the lighting only accented the absent-minded scholar’s pale skin and wild gray hair.
“Ah, Ed—” Andarus began, then stopped when he saw Mr. Esset’s son. “Oh, so the younger Esset is here too. Good to see you, boy. Too bad you never took the scholarly ways like your father. Ah well, I think I’ve found something useful.”
Andarus was Head Librarian, and he rarely left this massive room. As such, he was a rather ghostly fellow—food wasn’t permitted in the library, and since he rarely left, he rarely ate. Esset wasn’t sure how exactly he could live on the tiny, intermittent meals, but he was still here, so Esset supposed it was enough. At any rate, his mind made up for his frail body; he knew almost every book and document in the library to some degree, even the uncatalogued ones, so if you could pull him away from whatever document he had his nose buried in, you could usually find out if the library had what you were looking for.
“The works of Jionar Atah. A brilliant, if unpleasant, fellow. Still, did some interesting and valuable work. Thought mages were a load of tosh and tried to do everything without magic, including undoing many magics. According to him, a geas can be undone with salt.” Andarus held out a scroll to Mr. Esset, largely ignoring the younger man.
“Salt?” Mr. Esset repeated, surprised. He unrolled the scroll partway to read it, and his son looked over his shoulder. Finally Mr. Esset set the scroll down on the table and put weights on it so they could better examine it.
“What’s an ‘eschepharius’?” Mr. Esset asked, carefully enunciating how he thought the strange word would be pronounced.
Andarus squinted at the parchment. “No idea. He made a lot of his own instruments, but he rarely stopped to explain or diagram them. Unfortunately his workshop was destroyed with all its contents. Everything of his that we have was obtained from his apprentice years after the fact. Unfortunately this renders repeating most of his experiments impossible, but much of the work still contains important research. Unroll that further, and it shows the minimal spell structure for the geas.”
“Amazing,” Mr. Esset remarked, studying the diagram.
“How can someone forsworn from magic see it? Doesn’t that take a magical ability?” Esset mused aloud.
“Hypocrisy on the part of the researcher doesn’t invalidate the work,” Andarus replied, looking sternly over his glasses at Esset, who diverted his attention back to the scroll.
“How is this useful if we don’t have the tools to replicate it?” Esset asked.
“Well, knowing that salt works is helpful,” Mr. Esset pointed out. “Something about the constitution of the mineral must be a natural conductor for this structure of magical energy. All we need is to position the salt precisely and it will cause the geas magic to naturally undo itself. I’m not sure I understand the theory behind it, but he claims that it worked in practice.”
“I sometimes suspect that he didn’t understand the theory himself,” Andarus remarked. “But his experiments were solid, and he was definitely on to something.”
“I can’t see how this could be done without a mage,” Mr. Esset observed. “I mean, previously the mage would have needed to be immensely powerful and skilled to destroy the geas with brute force. Now the requirements have simply changed to a need for skill in at least the area of telekinesis to position the salt in the particular pattern necessary to undo the geas.”
Esset ground his teeth—he didn’t know any mage that fit that description either. Then an idea dawned on him.
“What about hydrokinesis?” Esset asked.
“Hm…the elementalist would have to have exquisite control, and there might be trouble with the salt dissolving, but with an appropriate level of control and preparation, I imagine it could be done,” Mr. Esset replied. “Why, who were you thinking of?”
“The Nadra. I know they have mages, although I never worked with any personally. I’m fairly sure they’re water and earth elementalists. It would make sense, anyways. And I know they’d be willing to help.” He and Toman had saved their race from extinction, after all.
“We’d best copy this out then,” Mr. Esset said, reaching
for the supplies on the desk. They copied out the diagram perfectly and recorded all the necessary information before putting the scroll in a protective tube.
“Thank you for your help, Andarus,” Mr. Esset said, turning around. Andarus had his nose buried in another scroll already.
“Andarus?” Mr. Esset stepped closer.
“Yes, yes, leave it, I’ll clean up.” Andarus didn’t so much as look up from his scroll.
“We can help clean up—” Esset began.
“Shoo!” Andarus reprimanded. Both young and old Esset alike made haste out of the library.
The moment they were out the doors, Esset pulled open their transcribed scroll to view it in the light of the bright sun. Something just didn’t seem quite right about it. The diagram of the spell structure was complex, and he wasn’t entirely certain what the various lines and dots meant, nor the references to the bizarre instrument Atah had used to conduct the experiment.
“Whoa!” Mr. Esset yanked his son out of the way of someone he’d almost collided with—someone else who was also reading while walking. Esset and the other man looked up sharply at each other in surprise.
“Esset!” A moment later, Esset found himself enveloped in a hug, with barely enough time to identify his hugger beforehand.
“Lors!” Esset squeaked back as the bear hug squeezed the breath out of him. It was easily done, since Lors was roughly the size of a bear, and the great mop of curly black hair on his head added to the impression. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” Lors replied, releasing Esset. He briefly looked at Mr. Esset to greet him with a nod before turning back to the younger man. “I heard you were dead. Good to see it’s not true.”
“Very good,” Esset agreed. He’d forgotten how big Lors was. Although they were of a similar height, Lors’s shoulders were two or three times the width of Esset’s. Lors had been scrawnier than Esset when they’d played together as kids, but now he was so burly his mage robes looked strange on him.
“Straight to the library upon getting back though, hey?” Lors said, but his smile was conspiratorial, not mocking.
Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) Page 4
