The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

“Something tells me she doesn’t care about Nik. She does care about your father. Don’t know why, but she wants to find him nearly as badly as you.”

  “Yeah. And how far will she go to do it?”

  “Oh,” Devan said. Then, “Tom…”

  “Yeah, he’s probably in trouble. I think we better get ourselves to the park.”

  14

  Energy practically sizzled around the park as we arrived. I whipped the truck up to the curb outside the park, staring at the wall surrounding it for a moment as I collected myself. Devan sat stiffly next to me.

  “Why do we keep ending up here?” she asked.

  “The Elder. It’s not only the park, but it’s all the crap he made.”

  “Like the cylinder,” she said. I nodded, and she let out a long sigh. “I know that when we returned to Conlin, we did it mostly for some quiet, but I think when this is all over, it’s time to seriously start figuring out your father.”

  I gripped the steering wheel of the truck. “I thought we have been trying to figure him out.”

  Devan reached across the truck and grabbed my arm. “Have we? I mean, you’ve been searching for things that he might have had something to do with, but I don’t think you’ve really been trying all that hard. Think of the shed behind Sam’s house. You went there, what, something like two times. That’s a place of the Elder. Just like your house is a place of the Elder. It seems like he’s been leaving you clues, but you’ve just not wanted to look into them.”

  I pulled my eyes away from the park. The energy crackling around us could wait. If we survived this, what Devan suggested was a pretty big shift from what we’d been doing. “I didn’t know if you’d be willing to help me look,” I said.

  “Why? Because my father is such a dipshit?”

  I laughed softly. “That’s part of it.”

  “Ollie, I know you need to understand where you came from. I get that. And part of that is understanding what kind of man your father was. I still think he was a jackass. Leaving you like that? Who does that?”

  “The Elder,” I said.

  “But it’s more than that. If he had an agreement with the shifters, and they had some agreement with my father, isn’t it time that we start to understand why?”

  “Yeah, maybe it is. After,” I said.

  I climbed out of the truck and paused long enough to reach behind my seat and pull out the one thing I’d brought back with me when we crossed the Threshold: the ivory bow the Trelking had given me. It was smooth and wrapped with a leather grip and strung with the fibers of the sharsin plant. A small quiver of arrows was tucked behind the seat, as well, and I grabbed it, too. I snapped it onto the belt Devan had made me, unsurprised to learn there was a place for the quiver.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Hey, Ollie?” When I turned to her as we made our way around the front of the truck, she eyed me up and down. “You’re finally starting to look a bit like a badass.”

  “Not Robin Hood?”

  “Maybe a little?”

  I laughed as we made our way into the park.

  The lanterns circling Agony glowed with a soft hum. We hurried through the park, moving past the sculpture. I didn’t bother to give it a second look. The damn thing sometimes seemed like it wanted to follow me. Devan motioned where we needed to go. Her skin glowed brightly as she pulled on her power. I realized then that I found it kind of sexy.

  “What?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not now. After.”

  “We might not make it to after.”

  There was that. “Trust me. After.”

  “You’re an idiot, Ollie.”

  There was no doubting that anymore. “We need to find Taylor,” I said. “If she’s got the cylinder, then we need to get to her first.”

  “You really think she’ll be here?”

  “If there’s a gateway opening, I think she’ll be here.”

  “And you think you can use the cylinder to stop Nik?”

  “The Nizashi seemed to think it was powerful enough.”

  “What if she doesn’t have it?” Devan asked.

  “We might be fucked.”

  “Great.”

  “Look for Jakes,” I said. “He needs to know that we might have some way to stop Nik.”

  “You don’t think the shifters are going to be able to stop him?”

  There was a low, pained howl that suddenly split the night. It came from the front corner of the park, near where the obelisk stood. I didn’t know if Nik had the ability to form the patterns needed to use the gateway in the park, but given what I’d seen of him, I didn’t want to risk that he didn’t. Already, I’d underestimated him too much. First the Nizashi, then the easy way he’d stunned the shifters.

  “Guess not,” I said.

  We raced off through the trees, heading toward the corner where we’d heard the shifter. If Nik had killed one of them, I’m not sure there was anything that would stop him. He seemed to have no limits to his power, nothing that slowed him.

  I found the shifter lying on the ground near where the obelisk had been. The statue was missing, nothing more than a gash in the ground remaining. Blood poured from the shifter’s side, leaving the fur damp and dark with blood. Devan ran over to it and placed her hands on the shifter’s sides. The light glowing from her increased. As it did, the shifter breathed easier.

  “Were you able to do anything?” I asked.

  “Slowed the bleeding,” she said. “It should be enough to give her time to heal. They have quite a bit of magic on their own. I just tried to give her time to use it.”

  “Her? Kacey?”

  She shook her head, but didn’t explain any further.

  I scanned the area around where the obelisk had been. It looked as if it had been ripped from the ground, leaving the earth heaping and heaving around it. Had Nik used the same pattern Taylor had used earlier to loosen it? Once I would have thought that unlikely. Taylor was a skilled artist, capable of using patterns that even I couldn’t manage. I’d spent a decade studying some of the most complex arcane patterns, but that didn’t make me the equal of someone with her skill. More than that, Taylor had needed my father’s book.

  “Where are they?” I asked Devan.

  She pointed to the far corner of the park. The Child sculpture was there.

  “Do you think he’s already got the other statues?” I asked.

  “I don’t know how that would even be possible.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t, either, until I saw Taylor manage to make the obelisk wobble. Think of what might happen were he to go after Agony.”

  I said it as a joke, but Devan’s eyes widened. “Go after him. I’ll be right back.”

  She didn’t wait for me to agree, running off back toward the front of the park.

  “Well, that’s weird,” I said, looking down toward the shifter, but she was gone, too. I shook my head and hurried through the park, using the memories of my youth to find my way in the dark. There wasn’t even much moonlight for me to find my way. It made it even more eerier.

  The medallion went cold, and I wondered what Devan was doing. I didn’t have much time to consider. As I reached the Child, a sculpture shaped something like a child with a blank face looking out and away from the park, there was a flurry of activity.

  Two shifters stood on either side of the statue, facing Nik with teeth bared. They blocked him from reaching the statue, holding him at bay with teeth and snarls and not a little magic. What they used was enough for me to feel. It hung in the air, like moisture after a rain, thick and heady. Nik stood unfazed.

  Damn, but he’d changed.

  Nik glanced over at me and smiled. The bastard stared down two shifters and actually smiled. It made me want to punch him. “I’m surprised you’re still upright, Oliver.”

  “Well, you know, I didn’t want to miss the party. Figured I needed to come.” I took a step toward him, and he glared at me, waving his hand in a
complicated swirl. The shifters were thrown backward before catching themselves and starting toward him again.

  “Seems you’ve changed since we last saw each other,” Nik went on. “Back then, you would have been pretty content to have the Trelking destroyed.”

  “Things change, Nik.”

  He smiled wider. “Don’t you know it.”

  He started to make another motion with his hands. The shifters didn’t give him a chance to finish and darted toward him, snapping and sending a burst of magical energy toward him. Nik waved it off. He simply waved it off. The shifters fell to the ground. Neither moved.

  I drew an arrow and nocked it.

  Nik gave me an amused smile. “An arrow, Oliver? That’s what this has come to?”

  I loosed the arrow.

  Nik grabbed it before it could plunge into his stomach. “You’re a fool if you think an arrow can stop me,” he said.

  This time, I smiled. Then I infused the arrowhead with power.

  The explosion knocked Nik backward, throwing him off his feet and toward the sculpture. When the Trelking decided that I should learn to shoot an arrow, I had begun adding patterns to the arrowheads. Now I was glad that I did.

  Nik rolled to the side. The explosion hadn’t done much more than stun him. I had hoped for more, but after what I’d seen him do, I guess I didn’t really expect much different.

  He gripped the sculpture with one hand. With the other, he made a flicker of movement, spraying ink along the ground next to the sculpture. When he infused it with power, the sculpture separated from the ground with a soft tearing sound.

  “Don’t do this,” I yelled after him.

  I loosed another arrow. It missed but hit the ground next to him. I pressed my will through the pattern on the arrowhead and another explosion radiated from it. This time, Nik was ready for it. He whipped his finger in a tight circle, and the energy from the explosion bounced off a pattern I hadn’t even seen him make.

  The control he had was greater than that of any other painter I’d ever seen. Part of me wanted nothing more than to study with him, soak up what he’d learned, but the other part wanted to take him down. The idea of losing to Nik galled me.

  He clenched a fist and opened it, cupping his palm toward his face. I’d seen him do something similar twice before. I jumped to the side and rolled behind a tree at the same time as he sent his attack. I barely had time to hide before the force of it struck the trunk of the stout oak, sending it swaying.

  I peeked around the tree, but Nik was gone. The statue, too.

  Shit. How many of the sculptures did he have?

  I glanced at the shifters. Neither was large enough to be Jakes, and neither moved. At least they still breathed, their chests rising slowly, but they would be no help. Were there other shifters or were we on our own? I didn’t like the odds if that was the case.

  And where was Devan? The medallion practically burned it was so cold.

  I grabbed the two arrows I’d fired—the magic I used to trigger the pattern didn’t destroy the arrow itself—and stuffed one of them back into the quiver. The other I held nocked and ready. The next time I saw Nik, I would be ready.

  The only problem was that I didn’t know where Nik had gone. Well, that wasn’t really the only problem. There was the little issue of needing to be able to stop him when I did find him. So far, nothing I had managed had any hope of even slowing him.

  We’d taken too long to get to the park. I knew that now. In that time, Nik had reached at least two of the statues. And if he had gotten the other two before we arrived, I knew where he’d be.

  I went sprinting toward the center of the park.

  As I did, there came another low howl, this time deeper and throatier than the others. I shivered from the sound.

  I came to a skidding stop near where the gate had appeared the last time. The four statues that had been set throughout the park now were placed at four perfect points of a square around where the gate would appear. They were set into the ground, as if my father had set them here originally, rather than scattered around the park.

  Nik stood there, casually looking around as if he weren’t being attacked by magical creatures of such power that it would make anyone else cower in fear. A shifter lay unmoving on the ground, head bent at an awkward angle. I couldn’t tell, but I would be surprised if whoever it was still lived. Jakes had shifted back into his human form, and Devan stood next to him. She clutched one of her figurines, and her skin glowed a bright yellow.

  “This is interesting,” Nik said as I approached.

  “You’re outnumbered here, Nik,” I said. “Let’s just stop whatever you think you’re going to do and relax. I’m sure Jakes here will even give you a bit of a reprieve for what you did.” The look on Jakes’s face told me that he would do no such thing.

  “I think you’re mistaken if you think you can stop me, Morris. You see, I discovered something when I left the Trelking. A teacher willing to show me things no other could, one willing to help me defeat the Trelking.”

  My heart started fluttering. I had thought that when he escaped the Trelking, he had crossed the Threshold and returned here, to safety, but what if I’d been wrong? What if he hadn’t? I never knew how Nik managed to cross the Threshold. That was the question I should have been asking. For him to have succeeded in returning would have required more help and power than he would have had access to at the time.

  Then I knew who had the skill needed to teach Nik what I’d seen from him.

  “You went to the Druist, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Nik smiled. “What choice did I have? I was helpless, condemned by the Trelking, left to rot. He taught me how I could add to my strength, taught me his secrets of modifying the power I could draw.”

  At least I knew where Nik had learned so much about modding. The Druist would have taught him how to do it safely. That would be the reason Taylor hadn’t been changed any more than she had.

  “You shouldn’t have opposed me, Oliver. You’re the reason I survived so I had no intention of harming you, but…” He shrugged. “Once I do this, I’ll be free of him, too. This is the task he assigned me.”

  “You’ll never be free of him, Nik. And if you do this, you’ll never be free of others with power chasing you.” I glanced at Jakes. Even if he were to round up the other shifters in Conlin, would they have enough power to catch Nik? Would anyone on this side of the Threshold have the power needed to catch him? A mage apprentice, trained by the Druist. Hell, I was starting to wonder how many on the other side would have enough power to stop him. “Is that what you want? Is that the life you want to lead?”

  Nik swung his gaze from me to Devan. “You ask that when you brought her across the Threshold? You should thank me, Oliver. I don’t intend to take her to the Druist. And by doing this, I’ll free you from worrying about the Trelking sending his assassins after you again.”

  He made a motion with his hand, and Jakes grunted. Devan glared at him, skin glowing slightly brighter. Somewhere in the distance, there came the sound of thump, thump, thump. I’d heard it before, but right now, I couldn’t remember where.

  “They weren’t after Devan,” Taylor said.

  Nik frowned as Taylor stepped out from between two trees and leveled the long, silver cylinder at Nik. The patterns carved into the cylinder glowed with a blue light. With a flick of her wrist, a circle of blue surrounded Taylor.

  Nik hesitated. It was the first time since he’d arrived that he seemed uncertain. Then it faded. “You think the Trelking cared about getting his daughter back?” he asked. “The Druist allowed me to search for items of the Elder. Taylor hasn’t been of much use in that regard, but then again, Arcanus never did understand power.” He spread his arms wide. “When I heard you’d returned, and brought De’avan… Well, I knew that he would send the Nizashi. Their connection to the Trelking creates a weakness, and one that I intend to exploit.”

  With a flick of his wrist, he sent anothe
r blast at Jakes. Clearly, he considered Jakes the biggest threat. This time, Jakes had learned. He brought his hands together and caught the magical attack Nik used. In the same motion, Jakes tossed it up and into the air. He didn’t do anything else, but he didn’t really need to.

  “You could be useful,” Nik said. He made two swirling motions with his wrist, each time sending the attack toward Jakes. Jakes managed to deflect each one.

  As he did, I shot an arrow at Nik. Like before, he caught it, but this time, he pushed it into the air on a surge of fire. He gave me a dismissive leer.

  “Taylor—” I urged.

  Taylor pulled power through the cylinder, and it made a strange humming sound, high-pitched and painful. Jakes dropped to his knees in pain and didn’t get back up.

  She tried to release the energy. I felt it as she did, as it failed. She looked over at me. “It’s not working, Oliver. It’s attuned to the Elder. That’s why I wanted to bring it here, to see if there might be an answer about how to activate it, and find out why I could never use it before…”

  “Wait…you had the cylinder? And wanted to bring it here?” Taylor nodded.

  “But someone stole it from me. When I saw it in the shed—”

  “Enough!” Nik roared. He cupped his hands toward Taylor. His power built sharply, cutting through the air.

  “Taylor, get down!”

  She reacted too slowly. The only thing that saved her was the circle she’d created before. Even protected as she was, Nik’s attack knocked her back, and she went sliding behind a tree, unconscious.

  Jakes was still addled by the awful humming the cylinder had made when Taylor tried triggering it. I saw it resting near her circle, still lying within the protection. It was useless to me, anyway, especially if it was attuned to my father.

  “Now, are you going to let me finish this? I don’t really want to hurt you or De’avan, Oliver. You were good to me, as good as anyone can be over there.”

  The obelisk rotated and started to glow. Nik hadn’t even touched it.

  “Listen, Nik. This is a mistake. You don’t know what will come through if you open this gate.”