Alchemist Assault (The Alchemist Book 2)

by Dan Michaelson

  If he could only feel it squeeze around his fingers again. Sam thought to when he’d first felt that pressure on him. He’d been afraid. How could he not be when he had a strange device stuck to his hand? Then there was the constriction, which left him thinking that perhaps Ferand’s mocking warning had been right.

  “How are you?”

  Sam turned toward Tara’s voice. He hadn’t heard her come in, too caught up in his thoughts about the vrandal. “Blind, apparently.”

  “Havash thinks you’ll recover.”

  “Does he?”

  Tara inhaled softly. She moved close enough to him that Sam could feel the warmth radiating from her. “He doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks you’ll recover.”

  It was the same as what Chasten had told him. “What about you?”

  “If Havash thinks—”

  “I want to know what you think.”

  “I don’t know. He used a complicated angulation on you.”

  “More complicated than you can use?” Sam wished he could see her face so he could know how she reacted, but all he could sense was movement in the darkness. There was none from Tara, and though she was near him, she didn’t sit. She remained a step away from him. Nervous, he figured.

  “It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been around the Grandam when she uses the arcane arts. This was different. It reminds me of the way the book has us use power.”

  That wasn’t all that surprising to him. Havash had the book in his possession, even if he didn’t have a key for it. From what Sam had been able to determine, he didn’t think Havash had been able to read anything in it prior to wearing the vrandal.

  “Then he’s had a way of reading the book all along and has been hiding it from us. How long have I been here?” he asked.

  “It’s been a few days.”

  Sam sat up. “Days?” He had thought a few hours at most. Knowing what he did about the nature of arcane magic, he would’ve expected Havash to heal him quickly enough that he’d need to rest, but nothing else. He still ached from the ordeal. A few days should’ve taken that pain away by now. “How could it have been so long?”

  “Havash used a considerable power on you, Sam. It takes time to recover from that.”

  He sighed. If it had been this long already, he was less likely to come around from it. A few days and he still couldn’t see anything. His vision was nothing but black. Even the vrandal didn’t feel nearly as secure as it should be. He didn’t think the bond Havash hoped to form on him would hold.

  “Sam—”

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “I can see that you’re not okay.”

  He lowered his head. “I wish I could.”

  “That’s not what I meant. It was a poor choice of words.”

  Sam ran his hand along the vrandal. “You don’t have to stay here. I’m sure you have other things you need to be doing. Classes and those sorts of things.”

  “I’ve gone to my classes for the day. I want to be here with you. You don’t have to worry about your classes. Havash made sure your instructors knew that you’re sick, so you are excused. I don’t think you have to even worry about missing anything. You’re so far ahead that it doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m only so far had with what I’ve read, but not with what I can do,” Sam said.

  “Sam…”

  She pressed close enough to him that he could feel the warmth emanating from her even more. There was something else, though he wasn’t sure what it was. Almost a tingling sensation came from her, as if it were trying to wash along his skin.

  “I can’t learn what I need to learn like this. I don’t have that much time left the Academy.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “But I do,” Sam said. And as he said it, he realized that was the truth. He did believe that he only had a little bit of time left in the Academy. When that time was up, he would be forced to leave, and he wanted to take full advantage of all of the time he had in the Academy. He wouldn’t be able to do that this way.

  She punched him again. “You can be pretty dumb for a smart guy.”

  Tara sat unmoving. Sam was aware of her weight on the bed and could feel the warmth coming from her, along with that other sense—that tingling.

  “Are you using arcane arts?” he asked.

  “Can you see it?”

  Sam pointed to his eyes. “Can’t see anything, remember?”

  “Then how did you know?”

  “I can feel something. It’s like an energy, though I don’t know how to fully describe it. It’s…” Sam tried to focus on what he could detect, but there wasn’t much. The sense of it was there. That energy. That power. As he held onto his awareness of it, the sense began to increase within his mind.

  It wasn’t just the tingling. There was something more to it. Warmth. Was that what he felt from the vrandal?

  “I don’t know what it is, but it’s there.” He looked down, though he couldn’t see anything. More of what she’d said troubled him. If Havash and the others hadn’t found Daven, did that mean that he would have to search for him?

  “You’re thinking about Daven. From what I know, Havash and Chasten went looking for him but didn’t find anything. They had me show them the section of the city where you met him—”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “There was an attack, and you were targeted. Havash has made that clear. I thought it was best if they knew everything so they’ll have a chance to help you however they can.”

  Sam took a deep breath. “Did they find anything?”

  “They don’t tell me anything.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. “Have you tried to heal me?”

  “What?”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Sam, Havash is far more skilled than me. I won’t be to do anything he can’t. I’ve told you how impressive the magic he used was.”

  “You told me, but I also remember how you healed me when we were first attacked in the city. I just thought…”

  Tara took both of his hands. She was careful with the vrandal hand, cautious not to touch it. The sense of energy coming from her increased. The tingling started to press along his skin, leaving him fully aware of the surge in the way she used her power. That was a strange thing for him to suddenly be aware of. With Tara, and arcane magic, in particular, he’d been able to see it but had never really felt it unless someone had wanted him to.

  Warmth washed through him, the same warmth he felt through the vrandal. Sam breathed in, and that sense stayed with him. The warmth continued to swirl through him, sweeping from his feet all the way up to his head. He tried to brace for it, half expecting there to be a surge of pain, but there was none.

  “I don’t think there’s anything I can do,” Tara said.

  “Keep trying.”

  “I’ve used all the different healing techniques I know. If you were able to see, you’d know just how much I’ve put into this. There isn’t anything more I can do.” She leaned away from him, but the sense of warmth and the tingling remained. Whatever she had done—or was still doing—lingered, but his vision remained the same.

  “I guess it was too much to hope for,” he said.

  “It’s not too much. I understand why you’re hoping for something more, but I think you’ll have to ask Havash to keep trying for you. I’m… I’m not good enough for this.”

  He could hear the pain in her voice as she admitted that, and Sam wanted to tell her that she was good enough. It was him. Whatever had happened had been because of him. He’d been the target. It was his fault the vrandal didn’t stay bonded, and it was his fault that her arcane healing magic didn’t work on him. “It’s not you,” he said. “Havash has asked other angulation masters to help, but it hasn’t worked.”

  “I feel like it is. That’s why Havash can—”

  “What can Havash do?” a voice interrupted.

  Sam looked toward the sound of the
voice, hating that he could be surprised as often as he was. “She was trying to heal me.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Why do you both keep talking about sight when I have none?”

  Havash stopped in front of him. Sam was aware of it through the pressure on his senses but not in any other way. The tingling he’d detected from Tara began to come from Havash, and then the warmth he’d felt from her earlier swept through him, this time from Havash.

  “You speak as if you’re a man who’s known the darkness his entire life,” Havash said. The warmth pressed into Sam, who could almost feel what Havash was doing, though not entirely. “You have been without sight for only a few days. If you recover, you will have no lasting effects.” Havash sniffed. “Did you detect the difficulty, Ms. Stone?”

  “There’s something within him I can’t heal.”

  “Very good. Have you felt it before?”

  She squeezed Sam’s hands. “When we were attacked. It was there then, but that wasn’t the injury I needed to focus on. He’d broken his leg, and if I did nothing for that…”

  “You were able to restore a broken leg while under attack?” Havash asked.

  “It wasn’t my best work.”

  He could hear Havash chuckle softly. “I’m sure it was not, but that’s still impressive.” He paused. “Watch what I do here and see if you can repeat it.”

  Tara squeezed Sam’s hands and released them. The tingling returned. This time, it was more like what he’d felt when the vrandal had stopped working for him. With the similarities, he had to believe that whatever had taken away his ability to use the vrandal had been magic. Could Havash determine who’d used it? He believed it’d been Luthian, and if that were the case, then there might not be anything more that could be done for him.

  Warmth swept through him, working its way through his head, then down through his body. It was a different sensation than what he’d detected before, though still potent. When the warmth started to fade, there came another wave, this time from Tara.

  Each time he felt it seemed stronger than the last. It was becoming increasingly easy to pick up on what was happening around him. Sam had known it would. People adjusted to injuries, which he’d seen often enough to know it could and would happen. If he remained blind, he knew he’d eventually come to terms with it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to know if something more could be done. Having Havash and Tara working on him might be the key to recovery.

  The warmth faded, and Tara took a deep breath. “That’s a different use of healing than I’ve done before. Where did you learn it?”

  “I’ve studied for many years, Ms. Stone.” Havash moved closer and rested his hand on Sam’s head. Sam was too startled to move. “I am not certain as to the source of the blockage inside him. There’s no further influence, as far as I can tell, but something remains within him.”

  “I felt it more strongly this time.”

  “Good. Then you can continue to pick at it.”

  “Pick at it?” Sam asked. “That doesn’t sound very good.”

  “We need to understand the reason you’ve not been completely restored,” replied Havash. “I think that when we do, you will have both your sight and your connection to the vrandal returned to you.”

  There was a soft sound of footsteps, and then Havash was gone.

  Tara squeezed his hands. “I’m going to keep trying.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Would you stop being like that? I want to. Besides, there’s something strange about this. I think I should be able to figure it out.”

  “Great.”

  “What’s that?”

  Sam grunted. “I get the sense that I’m now your project.”

  “You might be.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sam paced blindly inside the room. He knew the dimensions well and no longer smacked into the walls. There were ten paces one way and fifteen the other.

  At one point, the door came open, and he smelled a hint of pine, a distinct and different scent than he had notice from any of the other people who had come into visit him.

  “Sam?”

  Sam hurried over to his bed, taking a seat. “You can come in, James,” he said.

  He crawled into his bed, lying back, needing to try to conceal his illness. As far as James knew, he was merely sick, nothing more than that.

  “You aren’t here. Tara said that you had been sick, but it’s been a few days, no one has heard anything from you, so the rumors had started to spread.”

  Sam snorted, and he stared straight up, not wanting James to have any cues to think that he couldn’t see. “I’m sure they have.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t really know. I hit my head,” he said. “I was trying to get into the library to read, and I tripped.”

  “You tried breaking into the library?” James started to laugh. “I’m sorry, Sam, I shouldn’t belittle your plight. It’s just that is a very Sam-like thing to do.”

  Sam made a show of grabbing for his head. “It hurts, and the different attempts to try to calm the pain haven’t been fully effective.”

  “I suppose if we still had alchemists here, they could use that on you, but…”

  Sam smiled tightly. “I know.”

  “It’s not the same without you in class.”

  “That’s nice of you to say.”

  “Well, it’s true. It’s like we’ve all lost a student from our year. I know we will eventually lose some students. It happens every year. I wasn’t ready for it.”

  Sam practically felt James’s gaze upon him.

  “I will be better soon enough,” he said.

  “You had better. We don’t have too much time for our next exams. These aren’t the big ones, so I doubt it will be too hard for you to catch up. If anyone can do it, it would be you.”

  “I don’t know. It depends on what they’ve been teaching.”

  “Still the same,” James said. “At least, it’s the same as it had been before you got sick. Different than usual. Better in some ways.”

  Sam resisted the urge to tell him that it was only better because they were trying to learn how to defend themselves against the dangerous attack, but he decided against that.

  “How is Lacey?”

  “Well, she has been spending more time with her friends, and to be honest, I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

  Sam chuckled. “You have time.”

  “I know. And ever since we’ve been stuck indoors, the olwand students have been spending more time around us. There is a second-year student who I have my eye on.”

  “Going for an older woman, huh?”

  “I figured you did, so I might as well.”

  “Except Tara and I are the same age.”

  “Well, Lindsay and I are, too. I got admitted late, remember.”

  “That’s right. So did I.”

  They chatted for a while longer, and it was comfortable. But when James finally left, it left Sam in silence, and then he began to feel sorry for himself once more.

  He knew that he shouldn’t, and he knew that there was no point in him getting worked up about what could be or what should be, but it was still the strangeness with what had happened to him.

  Tara had brought him out of the room a few times, but climbing the stairs had been too difficult. He didn’t trust himself. When he’d tried to climb them, he’d nearly fallen. Then coming back down, he had fallen. Tara had healed him of another break, this time to his wrist.

  Most of the time, he remained in his room or paced in the hall outside of it. They never encountered anyone else out in the hall, at least that he’d been aware of. Nothing had changed for him. He kept hoping that a little of his vision would return, even if it were nothing more than the outlines of shapes, but so far, there had been nothing. Darkness had become his friend. What was worse, he couldn’t read or observe the classes where he’d begun learning more about arcane magic—
none of the ways he’d passed the time.

  In the week since the blinding incident, he had begun to notice different things than before. It was in the changing pressure of the air. It was in the sounds of Tara’s soft footsteps, Havash’s slightly heavier ones, and Chasten’s shuffle. It was in the smell of food. Most of the time, his meals were brought by someone he knew. Occasionally they would send kitchen staff, who provided him with better food than he’d eaten before.

  There were other sounds too. When he lay awake at night with only the darkness for company, he could hear something breathing. When he’d first heard it, Sam had thought it was his imagination. Then he’d convinced himself that he heard someone else in the room with him. Over time, he realized the breathing was too slow and regular to be either. It was there, but it seemed to come from the building itself. It wasn’t until he stood in the hall, feeling the sense of air moving through, that he began to understand. The Academy itself seemed to breathe. That was strange to recognize, but he could feel it.

  Pulling the door to his room open, Sam stood in the hallway. The first step was always the most difficult for him, mostly because he waited and wondered if anything else was there. Not that he thought there would be, but he wanted to know if he might find someone.

  Air gently touched his cheeks, and Sam focused on the way it moved. It came from up the stairs, sweeping along the hall and pressing into his room. There was a rhythmic nature to it, which made it seem as if everything in the Academy breathed. That rhythm drew to him, calling him. It was often interrupted by what Sam suspected was movement from above, though he wasn’t able to confirm it.

  He headed toward the end of the hall and paused when he reached it. The wall blocked him from going anywhere else. As he wandered in the hall, he felt a soft breeze.

  There was something familiar about it, along with the smell, that from the alchemy tower.

  He felt his way along the hall, pausing where he smelled.

  There was a small grate. That meant he would have to be close to the Study Hall.

  He fumbled along the wall, moving his hands until he found the trigger.