He and Donya had plans to meet each day now, and when she arrived at his door later, his brows were furrowed, quill moving erratically across a page of notes.
“It’s here.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I got started immediately, but this is not what I’m used to. She sent a water spell. I’m not sure I understand it.”
She sat down beside him, her shoulder touching his. “Let me see.” She picked up the tome and thumbed to the beginning. The spell was mysteriously named water ways and there was no description of what the spell was for. Delminor showed her the other two entries and they were similar. “I thought she said they had shorter spells.”
“I’m guessing they do,” he said. “But I also think those are different spells than the ones we have access to. Inherently smaller. I don’t think they had a clue about what we found.”
Donya agreed. “Why else would she have given us this task instead of ejecting us or worse?”
“And this spell… What can you make of it?”
“I’ve seen these words before: grienan, sassrathallian, selucia, habberleese.” She read more thoroughly and looked up. “I think the name of this spell should be deluge. It looks like it draws up a wave of water and gushes outward.”
“That’s a strong spell. I guess it makes sense it’s so intricate.”
“Delminor, are we really going to help her decode this? It seems dangerous.”
He put his hand on hers. “Do we have a choice?”
She conceded and the two set to work. Delminor had already made a fair bit of progress, scanning each of the three spells for words that repeated within themselves. They went back to cross-reference those, finding them in all three places.
“It can’t be as easy as that,” Donya said. “There have to be single words that are common between them, too.”
“Agreed. Do you want to look for those or start on the diagrams?”
“We could use Pyron’s help with those.”
Delminor grumbled. “I don’t know.”
She pouted. “I know he ratted us out, but only to our friends. He didn’t tell Xervius.”
“Why would he say anything to anyone? I trusted him.”
“He was scared.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. If he was scared we’d be found out, then wouldn’t telling more people make it seem like he was part of it?”
Donya shrugged, tilting her head. “He’s always been close with the others. I guess he felt he could trust them.”
Delminor shook his head. “Why are you standing up for him? You would have been in as much trouble.”
She shifted closer to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Whatever happened to one of us was going to happen to both of us, no?”
“I—” but he could barely speak, having her so close.
“Tell me, if I was ejected, wouldn’t you follow?”
He grinned instantly, unable to stop himself. “Of course.”
“Well, we’re both still here. Nothing bad happened, not in the grand scheme of things. Let’s give him another chance to prove himself.” She leaned her forehead against him. “He’s my friend too, you know.”
He felt backed into a corner and didn’t care for it. He turned away and grabbed the spellbook, flipping through the myriad pictures, then he sighed. “I don’t think we have much choice.” He got up and headed over to Pyron’s lab.
The young mage was willing to help, surprised Delminor had come to see him at all. They hadn’t spoken much since the incident, but Pyron was eager to prove his loyalty. He dropped his own work and joined the other two.
“Where did you find these?” he gasped.
“The same place you find all the books. They were pretty high up, though.” Delminor didn’t mention that they had been several floors higher up.
“Amazing. Look at the detail work.” He flipped through the rest of the book and saw that all the drawings were as crisp. “It looks like the work of Lady Cathrateir. I didn’t know she did spellbook illustrations, though. Mostly she drew depictions of Lady Hathreneir and Lord Kallisor.”
Delminor nodded impatiently. He didn’t want to get caught up in a conversation about the war with Kallisor. All that mattered was the work at hand and the gratitude that came with being in a kingdom where magic wasn’t shunned by the populace. “It’s fascinating, but can we focus here?”
Pyron slid him a glance. “The fighting could kick up at any moment.”
“I’ll never fight in a war,” Delminor asserted. “That’s not what I’m here for. I don’t care which side wins. One day the fighting will stop. How much could things really change in the course of our lives anyway?”
“Drastically!” Pyron gasped. “We’d have our wrists shackled and our books burned.”
“Not if we’re ready for them and can defend ourselves. Speaking of which, can we please get to work on this?”
“You only asked me here because I can figure out these images. You have no interest in my opinions.”
“Pyron, that’s not true,” Delminor assured him. “I’m a bit obsessed with this challenge. It’s outside my purview and I’m anxious to know if I can work such a spell once we condense it. You’re the best chance we have of getting it done swiftly. I want you here with us for this. We could have puzzled it out on our own. I’ve done it before.”
Pyron hesitated, reading Delminor’s face. “All right. Let’s get started then.”
* * *
The spell took the better part of a month to break down and put back together. Donya practiced it in a larger room until she was able to cast the spell from memory. Water gushed from her hands and flooded the area, then slowly evaporated, leaving no evidence behind. It was a surge of water that would knock foes down easily. They were reluctant to share it with Una.
But they had no choice. Reminders appeared in their rooms. A stray dagger. An empty spellbook. One day they found their travel bags packed for them.
Delminor wasn’t sure how to contact them, but he scripted out the new spell and its description in duplicate, hiding his copy in the lab. He suspected what would happen once he handed it over to the masters.
He rolled the parchment up and tied it with the supplied ribbon, leaving it on his desk, hoping Una’s lackeys would find it and return it to her. Apparently, it worked, for the next day the scroll had been removed. A week later, another set of spellbooks appeared.
“Fire?” Delminor gasped. “Who do they think they are?”
“More to the point,” Donya asked, “who do they think we are? If we tackled a water spell, then clearly one of us has an inclination for water. They must know it’s me because they saw you cast an earth spell. But there’s no way then we could work with fire.”
“I get it… They’re setting us up for failure.”
“Setting you up?” Gallena asked from the doorway, having worked her way through the labyrinth to Delminor’s workspace. “Who could be setting you up for anything? Have you made enemies somehow? Who are they?”
Delminor was horrified that she was eavesdropping, unaware of how much she could have heard, but asking would reveal that he did have a secret. “It’s no big deal. I beat a bunch of neophytes in a match of Mage Wars and they challenged me to learn a new spell, is all. They said if I was that good, that I beat the lot of them, then I could handle some new magic. I just didn’t expect a fire spell.”
“What were their names?”
Donya stood up. “What do you want, Gallena? You didn’t come here to gossip.”
She frowned. “I want to know what you’re all up to. You’ve avoided the social room for weeks, except obviously to challenge people you don’t know to duels. What about the rest of us? Even Jaffral misses you.”
Delminor shrugged. “You’re never in the mood to play, when I’ve asked.”
He had only asked the one time; the day they had met with the masters. He regretted saying it, as it was a re
minder of that day and of Gallena’s suspicions, not that she needed a reminder.
“Well, let’s have a game later, then,” Gallena offered congenially. “We’ll tend to our days and then meet later? Say in six hours or so?”
“Sounds fun. We’ll see you then.”
“Very well. And good luck with your fire spell.”
Delminor barked a laugh. “As if.”
“You do know I study fire, so if you get stuck, I could help.” There was something odd in her tone.
“Thanks. I want to see what we can do first, but that’d be a help.”
She narrowed her eyes and shrugged, turning to leave. It took time for the two of them to calm down. Pyron was due to arrive soon to help and they wanted to make some headway first.
The words were very different than those of water and earth; dangerous, sharp, hissing. They started with the usual routine of seeking common words that echoed within the incantations and then began working between the tomes.
“Wait, what are these?” Delminor asked suddenly. He turned the book over and a strange set of symbols looked up from the page.
“Runes!” Donya said. “How are we supposed to decipher those?”
“I’ve never seen runes before.”
“I think they represent spoken words. Maybe that’s how the masters can cast their spells so fast. Maybe runes are the key?”
He put the book down. “This is ridiculous. What am I supposed to make of these?”
“Forget about it for now,” she suggested. “Let’s do what we’ve been doing and worry about those later.”
When Pyron arrived, he was taken aback by the progress they had already made after an hour.
“Pretty soon, you won’t need my help.”
“Don’t be silly,” Donya said. “You’ve still got the best eye for this sort of thing.”
“Gallena stopped by, said something about being careful spending time with you two. She seemed to be hinting at something. Trouble of some kind.”
Delminor shook his head. “She came and heckled us, too. I think she’s jealous we’re not spending time with her and we’re clearly working on something that she wants to know about.”
“Should we bring her in?”
“I won’t be bullied.” He said it, though he was currently being bullied by Una to get this work done. He dismissed the comparison; Una had actual power to do something to him.
“I don’t think that’s what she’s doing, Del. But okay.”
The three worked for a few hours, then broke to eat and to head to the social area to meet up with Gallena for a game. She eagerly ushered them over to a table. Jaffral was already there, setting up a board.
“Hey guys, wait until you see this.”
On the table was a hexagonal board game with a maze of paths spiraling around and crossing over each other. At each vertex was a triangle with three game pieces of matching color inside. The center was a swirling mix of all the colors, clearly the ending point of the game.
Jaffral splayed his hands over the game. “I would like you to meet Elemental Confluence.”
“It looks pretty intricate,” Delminor said. “How does it play?”
“Roll some dice and move one of your pieces to an empty space. You can’t land on a space that’s taken by another piece, not even your own. If it’s an elemental space, you get a token for that element. If you meet up with an opponent, there’s a battle for the space. Er, it happens if you try to pass them or land on the space.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
Gallena chimed in. “The rules are still being finalized. Jaffral’s been working on this for some time.”
Donya’s eyes popped wide. “You made this game?”
“We all had a hand in it,” Pyron added, “but the concept was all his. We wish you two could have helped with it.”
“It looks terrific,” Delminor dodged. “Let’s dive in and you can explain the other rules as we go.”
The game required a mix of strategy and luck. It was important to plan out certain moves, whether to attack an opponent or collect more power. The goal was to move all three pieces to the center of the board, but the maze made getting there a bit of a challenge. With good rolls, a single piece could make it to the center in about five turns. However, it wasn’t likely to get there without some trouble. Some spaces were traps and battles in their own right.
There were penalties for losing and sometimes the players got to choose the penalty. Losing a battle, for instance, could either cost the player elemental power or the piece was sent back to the start. The losing player was given the choice for the first few rounds, then they tried playing it with the opposing player making the choice, to see which version played better. It seemed fairer to let the loser choose what happened to their pieces.
Battles themselves were based on elemental powers and rolls of the dice. Fighting on a water space meant rolling the number of dice equal to the number of water element pieces the player had, minus any fire elements, as it was an opposing force. Likewise, air and earth were at odds, as were nature and physical forces. The other player’s response was in reverse. Regardless of the number of elemental pieces, each player could roll at least one die.
Physical attacks were unique. There was no elemental power to hoard, so the player was always able to roll an extra battle die. This was meant to represent the inherent strength of the Kallisorian army. The downside was that nature power was then unchecked, so they tried adding an extra defensive die when facing natural attacks.
Certain spaces slowed a piece down, preventing it from moving the next turn or two or forcing it to move back a few paces, determined by the roll of a die. There were booster spots that moved the piece ahead. Once the piece reached the center, it was untouchable. This was good overall, but it reduced the movement strategy of the other pieces, causing more battles, especially for a player that was ahead. Yet this provided a good challenge for the game.
True to form, Gallena competed fiercely, determined to win each round. She did win the first game but lost the second and opted not to play the third, instead watching and heckling the others.
Afterward, Delminor returned to his room and something seemed amiss. As he scoured around, he realized that the notes he had been taking for the fire spell all afternoon were gone.
Chapter 11
Subterfuge
Delminor knew immediately what had happened. Gallena had distracted him with the game while Arenda swiped his notes. He dismissed the possibility that Una had taken them, as she needed him to finish the research first.
He paced back and forth furiously, not sure how to handle the situation. There were no locks in any of the rooms; it was an unspoken rule not to mess with another’s materials. But he had been violated. He considered reporting them to Xervius, but he lacked direct proof and he wondered if he would have to explain what he was doing in the first place.
Instead, he concocted another plan.
Because they had only just started their research, Delminor didn’t have a second set of notes prepared. It was unfortunate because it meant a lot of backtracking. He didn’t care at the moment. He was determined to make the others regret their actions.
Delminor took out two sheets of parchment. He opened the first spellbook to the fire spell and scanned through it quickly, making two sets of notes. The first was his copy, correct and properly annotated. The second was loaded with subtle errors; two keyword placements swapped, a word missing, a diagram mirrored. He would do this going forward. The trick would be in hiding it from Donya and Pyron.
He worked through the night to reproduce as many of the notes he could so that when the others arrived the next day, they wouldn’t ask any questions. No, this was between Delminor and Gallena.
Each day they made progress on the fire spell, but to decode the entire entry took over two months. The trickiest part for Delminor was in deciphering the runes. The archaic letters represented different things depending on their pla
cement on the page and relative to each other. A symbol for power at the top represented stronger emphasis or spell components, while when located at the bottom, everything was meant to be more rudimentary. They also seemed to be mapped to the written incantations, cluing in the needed keywords.
He discovered this by taking fire books from the neophyte library and comparing them to the spells he had been given. There were always patterns, he learned. Like spoken language, there were nuances and dialects between the elements, but the core had a set structure that made the spells understandable.
As they drew to completion on the fire spell, Delminor spent extra time fine-tuning a bogus scroll for the others to pick up. Because Gallena was a fire mage, he had to ensure the spell looked authentic. He left it partially hidden on his table, barely sticking out of the main spellbook they were decoding. He then joined the others on the social floor to pick up another game of Elemental Confluence.
As he thought about the name and the balance of powers Jaffral had incorporated into it, where fire and water competed against each other, and so on, he wondered how accurately that represented the energies of those elements. Were they direct opposites of each other? The flowing sounds of water keywords did complement the sharp cracks of fire spells. Perhaps the energies themselves could be manipulated in such a manner.
After the game, where Arenda was absent yet again, Delminor stopped by the library and withdrew an air book for his studies. He wanted to test his new theory.
When he returned to his laboratory, he was pleased to find the bogus scroll had been removed and his true copy had not. He duplicated it and set it aside for Una, who would undoubtedly be looking for it soon.
He hated lying to Donya about the game he was playing with Arenda and Gallena, but he didn’t want to drag her into it. He imagined her being angry with them, her face curling in rage, her eyes narrowed. Even as he envisioned it, he shuddered. She was too beautiful to make such faces.
He sat with the air book and some parchment, writing out the key constructs of his pellet spell, then seeking a similar air gust spell. It was early on in the tome, as it was also a basic energy-summoning incantation. The keywords for air were sometimes loaded with vowels and he struggled to figure out how to pronounce some of them. Auvian was the easiest among them, but eilaueia tripped him up.
Delminor's Trials Page 6
