Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4)

by Holmberg, D. K.

  I couldn’t create the orb without her help. I knew my limits and that was a part of them. But I wasn’t sure I could use Taylor like Devan intended. Regardless of what she said, it did feel too much like what the Trelking had done with me. Oh, he’d offered to teach, to provide me with instructors able to show me the arcane patterns. With their help, I’d learned more than I ever would have learned had I stayed in Arcanus, but there was a hidden price. When dealing with men like her father, there was always a price.

  I turned to mini-Nik, considering my options. If I didn’t manage to make the orb work enough that I could partially unlock him, then my options were either not having his expertise, or freeing him completely and trying to convince him that he wanted to help. Neither of those options was any good. That left using Taylor.

  “All right. We’ll see if she can help. I can’t promise I won’t like it, though.”

  Devan shot me a look. “You’ve drooled over her enough don’t you think? And I don’t think even your power would be enough to withstand the beating you’d face.”

  I glanced down at where she had tucked her figurine. Nope. There wasn’t much I would be able to do against what Devan could throw at me; sort of like how there wasn’t much I could do if we ever were forced to face the Druist Mage.

  It was why I had to convince Nik to help.

  2

  When we came up from the lower level of the shed, we found Jakes waiting for us. He lounged against a tree near the edge of his lot—his, since his father had died—appearing to casually watch the shed for when we’d come out. The sun had begun to set, now filtering through the clouds with streaks of orange and red, mixing with the subtle change of the leaves. Soon enough, it would be fall. I hadn’t been in Conlin for autumn in a long time.

  “Morris. You manage to destroy anything while you were down there?” Jakes asked.

  I smiled. With a man as massive as Jakes, you didn’t want to do anything threatening. He was probably six-seven and built like a linebacker. As usual, he wore tight jeans and a plain gray T-shirt, nearly bulging out of it. He had short blond hair and piercing eyes that fixed me with a depth you wouldn’t normally expect from a man who looked like him.

  Then again, Jakes wasn’t really a man. He was a shifter, able to transform into a wolf-like creature, a being of immense magical power. Which was why it had shocked me that Nik nearly managed to defeat all the shifters. That was another reason I needed to learn from Nik. If he was able to stop shifters, that was the kind of shit I needed to be learning.

  “Well, you know me, Jakes. I wanted to see what else my father was keeping down there. He left so many little toys that it was hard to choose only one.”

  Jakes offered me a tight smile. The shed sat on his father’s land, at the back of his yard. The only way it could be opened was with a key my father had left me. I suspected there were things of Jakes in the shed, but he’d never tried claiming them. Besides, it wasn’t like your typical garden shed, anyway. Oh, it held a few typical items. The shovel I’d used to knock out one of the Nizashi—if only temporarily—was certainly nothing more than a shovel. But there was no mower or snow blower or anything like that. Instead, it had a special access that led beneath the ground, to a hidden section where my father had worked and created his special prison for the little statues.

  “I’m not going to stop you from using the shed,” he started, making it clear that he could stop me if he chose, “but you need to be careful. What the Elder stored here is nothing like what you have at your house. I’m not sure my father even knew everything your father kept here. Know this: there is power beneath the ground here.”

  I waited for Jakes to go on, but he didn’t. I turned to Devan and she shook her head slightly. She didn’t know what he meant. Or she wasn’t going to tell me. Probably that, I decided. She could be pretty damn obstinate when it came to protecting me from myself. We might have crossed the Threshold to keep her safe, but she made a point of proving that she kept me safe nearly as often as I’d kept her safe. So far, she’d probably saved my life more than I’d saved hers.

  “Thanks, I think,” I said.

  “You were using the orb,” Jakes said.

  “Not using it. I don’t really know how to use it.” I hesitated, debating how much to tell him. Considering that what I intended would be done in the shed on Jakes’s land, I decided I’d better be honest. Besides, I didn’t want to piss off the only shifter friend I had. “All I want is to release a little of the power of the orb. I need to free up Nik enough to talk to him.”

  At the mention of Nik’s name, Jakes’s eyes narrowed. Given how many of the shifters had nearly died because of Nik, I expected outrage or anger or any number of emotions. Instead, he only nodded.

  “You could learn much from him, but you’d have to keep him controlled. Doing that will be dangerous. I will help.”

  I frowned, shooting a glance to Devan. “You’ll help?”

  Jakes crossed his arms over his chest. “You think I want revenge? None of the shifters died during his attack. And he’s proven to be a powerful mage. Having him trapped could prove useful.”

  Jakes was more practical than I would have been considering what had nearly happened to him and the other shifters. As far as I knew, Kacey and the others were fine now, but they’d damn near died. Nik hadn’t shown any sign of remorse. All he’d wanted was to take out Devan’s father.

  “Yeah, well I’m having a little trouble with the orb. It’s not working like I need it to. I think I could trigger it to power up completely, but that would free Nik, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “You thinking about creating another?”

  He’d been there when we’d made the first. Jakes had been a necessary component to it. I figured I didn’t need him this time, knowing Devan could help, but it wouldn’t hurt to have him on board with the whole thing. “I need one tied to me. Like the one I made for Adazi.”

  Had we not shattered it, I wouldn’t need to go through all this. But there hadn’t been a whole lot of choice, not if we wanted to survive that day. That was about the only time I’d really done anything heroic to save Devan.

  “This will help you free the mage?”

  “I don’t know about freeing him, but I hope it lets me control the power of the orb enough to use him.”

  “You will need her help. Does she know what you plan?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to need something to sweeten the deal. We can’t really trust her, you know?”

  “Nor should you. She has brought dark powers to Conlin. Considering what this place is, anything she brings only adds to the danger.”

  “And what exactly is this place?” I asked Jakes. That was another question I still needed answered, but so far I just kept having more questions.

  There was power in Conlin that didn’t exist in other places. There were doors here, crossings that would allow me to reach beyond the Threshold. Such crossings were rare anywhere else, but around Conlin? There were at least three crossings that I knew about, and that didn’t count the doorway that was thankfully still buried in the park. That door led somewhere different than the others did, and would take us to an even darker place, possibly a place beyond the protection of the Trelking. As bad as he might be, there were places on the other side of the Threshold where there were worse.

  “This is a place of power, Morris. Why else would the Elder have chosen this as his home? There is focus here. From the energy of the land to the thinness of the Threshold. That is why we watch over it.”

  “How long have you watched?” I asked. Since learning what the shifters did, how they acted as some sort of magical watchdog, I hadn’t really understood their role. My father had tasked them with it, I was certain of it, but what if he hadn’t? What if they had been here before the Elder?

  “We have watched the gateways since the task was first handed to us.”

  “By my father?”

  Jakes tilted his head in a quiet assent.
/>   “Who watched them before you?”

  “You assume there were guardians before, but don’t wonder if there was a reason for guardians to come.”

  I laughed softly and glanced over at Devan. “You’re speaking in riddles, Jakes. It makes you sound something like the Trelking.”

  “For you to make that comparison makes me wonder how well you knew the Trelking.”

  How well did Jakes know the Trelking? I’d gathered that he had more than a passing familiarity, but not much more than that. I knew that he’d hesitated getting involved with the Nizashi, fearing to upset the Trelking. But more than that?

  I grabbed Devan’s hand and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist, and I noticed the way she fixed her eyes on Jakes. Not in a leering, hungry sort of way, at least I hoped that wasn’t the way she was looking at him. This was more an appraising sort of consideration. Her power flared slightly, making the medallion go cold against my chest, but her skin didn’t glow and there was nothing else that would give it away. I wondered why.

  “I think I know him pretty well,” I said. “I worked for him for the last ten years. And if I fail to protect Devan, he intends to ship her off to the Druist Mage, so I think I know what we’re dealing with.”

  Jakes looked from me to Devan. The corners of his eyes tightened, making me wonder what it was he was thinking. Jakes had a quick mind, but he was careful, too. He hadn’t wanted to help Devan for a very specific reason—he hadn’t wanted to upset her father. There was history between the Trelking and the shifters that I needed to learn about.

  “Then there are other things you will need to know, Morris.”

  “What kinds of things?” Devan asked.

  I could tell from the tone of her voice that she feared what Jakes might have to share. It made me wonder if there were things that Devan had discovered but not shared. She complained about Taylor keeping things from us, but she did the same, especially if she thought it might help keep me alive. Most of the time, she was right.

  “Conlin is a place of the Elder, but it’s more than that. If you intend to protect it, then you will need to understand.”

  A smile spread on my face, and I put my hands out toward Jakes. “Whoa there, big guy. Who said anything about protecting Conlin? I promised Devan that I’d do what I can to keep her safe. The city is your responsibility.”

  “The gateways are my responsibility. The city had been the responsibility of the Elder.”

  There was something more to the way he said it that gave me pause. Not that the city was the responsibility of the Elder, but that it had been. “You think he’s gone now, too?”

  “I’m sorry, Morris. I didn’t think so at first, but with what we’ve encountered, I find it hard to believe the Elder would not have returned. If not for the gateway reopening, then certainly for the Nizashi.”

  Not Adazi. That meant Jakes figured I could take care of Adazi, though I’m not entirely sure that was true. I’d barely managed to keep myself alive when Adazi attacked. As much as we hated to admit it, without Taylor’s help, we might never have stopped him.

  And if my father was gone—if he was really gone—then what did that mean for me? I’d never believed he was gone. Even with all the evidence telling me otherwise, I’d always believed that he would eventually return. I mean, he’s the Elder. The kind of magic he could use, and that I’d learned he could use over the last few months, was more than anything I was capable of doing. But what if he’d gone up against a power that he couldn’t out muscle, someone like the Druist Mage?

  And here I thought I didn’t have anything more I wanted to ask the Trelking. All of a sudden, I wondered what he might have known. Considering the Trelking’s usual motivations, he wouldn’t simply share that information with me. No, he’d expect something for it.

  “I don’t think I’m the right man for the job, Jakes. If you ask me, you shifters can do a hell of a lot better job keeping the city safe than anything I can do. Besides, me being here only puts Conlin in more danger.”

  “There are things my kind cannot do,” Jakes said.

  He didn’t elaborate, but didn’t really need to. It was the same way with Devan. Her magic just didn’t work the same as mine. It might be purer, she might have deeper stores of power than anything I could work, but she couldn’t use it to create the same violence and devastation that I managed. That was one of the gifts of being a painter, part of the reason the Trelking had valued me. There was magic I could use, mostly broad magic, wielding it something like a club against those he needed me to. The subtler stuff came later.

  “And your being here might place Conlin in the crosshairs, but no more than when the Elder lived among us. You have potential, Morris. I’ve seen what you can do. In some ways, you might be better equipped to protect this place than the Elder. You have a certain fearlessness that he did not.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say. It was the kind of compliment that I wasn’t accustomed to receiving, and certainly not from a creature of such power like Jakes. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, trying not to commit.

  Jakes took it differently. He nodded at me, as if I’d just pledged to defend Conlin against all sorts of magical attacks. “Excellent. I will—” He cut off and his head tipped to the side. Without saying a word, he shifted into his massive wolf shape and loped off, bounding through the yard and into the nearby woods.

  I watched him until he disappeared. “That was weird,” I said.

  “Yeah. You’re not fearless. You’re just sort of stupid. How many times have you jumped in without really knowing what you’re doing?” Devan said.

  I studied the woods behind Jakes’s house. Conlin wasn’t densely populated, but the trees behind his yard led to someone else’s yard, not a park or forest like they did near my house. He hadn’t worried at all that someone might see him in his wolf form. Now, that might only be because he supposedly had the power to make himself invisible to others, but I wasn’t sure he could. Using magic like that would take a lot of power, probably more than what Jakes would want to use just to remain unseen. I still didn’t know how many people in town knew about the shifters.

  “What is it?” Devan asked.

  “Not sure. It seems to me that Jakes taking off like that can’t be a good thing.”

  “Well, he is the sheriff.”

  “What do you think?” I asked, staring into the woods. “You think my father’s really gone?”

  Devan patted my arm. “I think the Elder planned his departure. But he’s been gone a long time, even by my standards. Seeing some of the things he was into, it’s possible something went wrong, even for him.”

  Considering everything that we’d seen since returning to Conlin, there was any number of terrifying things that could have been the end of my father. Had the hunters managed to catch him? They were dark, nightmarish creatures that fed on painter power. From what Jakes had said, my father had been the reason the hunters were restricted from reaching us here. Could it have been one of the beings he went after to imprison? It was possible, but we were in possession of the cylinder that was used in their capture. Had he been after one of those creatures, he would have taken that with him, possibly even the orb. Leaving them behind told me that he probably wasn’t after something like that.

  There were others of great power, those I was more familiar with like the Trelking and the Druist Mage, but I hadn’t heard anything in my time on the other side of the Threshold that would make me think that he had tangled with either of them.

  Even if he hadn’t, I was now mixed up with them. And if I didn’t manage to learn more than I had up to this point, then we might end up as disappeared as my father.

  “Yeah, well I’m not letting that happen to us. We’re going to figure out what we need to know to stay alive. Even if it means forcing Taylor to help us.”

  3

  Taylor sat on a wooden chair outside the garage, nothing but a soft light glowing overhead for her to see by. A large sketchpa
d lay open on her lap, and she made quick motions with the pencil. I resisted the urge to go and look over her shoulder to see what she was drawing. Anything that she would draw would be much more impressive than my best drawing. As an artist, she made a tagger like me look like a child working with crayons.

  I pulled Big Red, the faded F150 that my father had left in the garage and Devan had managed to get up and running, probably rumbling along better than my father had ever seen it, into the garage. A series of patterns pressed into the steering wheel and the gearshift helped Big Red, but I think more of the magic came from things I couldn’t really see. It had survived much more than it ever should have and still ran just fine, almost as if it liked the craziness I brought it into. There wasn’t anything else fancy about the truck. No modern conveniences, only an old cassette deck that I hadn’t managed to tell if it worked since I had no cassettes, and a radio with the type of dial you had to turn to find the right station. It suited me just fine.

  When I climbed out of the truck, Taylor looked up. She made a point of meeting my eyes and then turning to look at Devan. She seemed to know without me having to say that she had to convince Devan more than she ever had to convince me. She set the pencil down and closed the notebook resting on her lap.

  “Oliver,” she said.

  At least she didn’t use my first name. My father had named me Escher, probably thinking it some kind of joke. My mother gave me my middle name, one that I could use. I believed I would have even taken on one of the ridiculous names the Arcanus masters used if I had to be called Escher all the time.

  “Yeah,” I said. I glanced over at the house. There were no lights on inside, leaving it looking dark, but I didn’t need any lighting to feel the patterns worked around the house and into the foundation. I had placed other patterns layered around the front of the house, too, making it as protected as I could. I suspected Taylor had added some of her own, as well, but had never seen her use them.