Alchemist Illusion (The Alchemist Book 3)

by Dan Michaelson

  Sam found himself frowning. “How do you have it, then?”

  “That is a long story.”

  He waited, half expecting that she would share the long story with him and that maybe there would be some secret that he might learn, something about her vrandal, and something more about the power that she was able to control, but she didn’t say anything more than that.

  “Then you don’t need me.”

  “Again, you are mistaken. The vrandal bonds with its user. The technique is unknown. All that we can say is that the connection is difficult to sever.”

  “And painful,” Sam said softly.

  She looked up, holding his gaze for a moment. “Painful. Yes. It would be unless you understood the key to separating it yourself.”

  “So you came to the Academy for this vrandal?”

  And here he was starting to question whether or not she was actually one of the Nighlan, but it seemed to him that she had to be after power of her own if she were so interested in the vrandal. She had come after him and the almanac. And she had been found in the room with the seal—the lock, as he called it.

  “You are after power. That’s why you were there.”

  She shook her head again. “I felt the lock open.”

  “So you came to see what you could gather for yourself?”

  Sam hadn’t been sure whether battle had succeeded, but she must have, especially if Lilith had detected something.

  Lilith stared at him, her gaze lingering and a flat expression burning in her eyes. “What did you know about that place?”

  “Not much,” Sam admitted with a shrug. “I just knew that the Nighlan were after it.” He wasn’t even sure any longer if Lilith was with the Nighlan. He had believed that she was, but she didn’t react the way that they had. “They broke in, got to that place of power, and I’m not exactly sure what else,” he said.

  “It was a lock. It was designed to hold back a dangerous power.”

  “So it was power.”

  “Of a sort,” she said. Lilith turned, looking back over the Barlands come over the crackling lightning, and stood silent for a few moments. She seemed troubled. “There are three blocks. At least three that we know of. There might be more. Unfortunately, the truth behind them has been lost over time. Those locks hold back a dangerous power. And it’s controlled by a man named Rasan Tel.”

  She let the words hang in the air as if they should have some meaning to him.

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “You might not have, but the Nighlan have. Those who oppose their threat have.”

  Sam didn’t think that was exactly true. Daven hadn’t known what they were after, and he didn’t think that Luthian had as well. “Those who have tried to protect the Academy haven’t known,” Sam said.

  “Perhaps not recently, but they once did. Why do you think the lock is there?”

  “So there is one lock in the Academy? Where are the others?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what you did.”

  “And what did I do?” Even as he asked, he could feel the vrandal in his palm. He had been there when Bethal had used him, had used the vrandal, and had attempted to open the lock. Not for power, but to unleash some person that had been imprisoned?

  “I brought you here so that you could learn how to close it once again. The answer is inside of you, but you must find it. You are only new to understanding your power, but unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of time.”

  Power.

  That was similar to what Daven had claimed he possessed, that there was some scar blocking access to something that they had removed.

  And it was after that which Sam had helped Bethal, though not intentionally. After that, he had been a part of helping open the lock, releasing that power. It had been after that when Sam had helped a dangerous power escape.

  “If the other locks are intact—”

  “They are intact for now, but there is no telling how long it will remain that way.” Lilith looked over at him. “We have control over two of the three. We must ensure that those remain sealed.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or he can return.”

  “Return?”

  “He has been imprisoned for centuries.”

  “No one can live that long.”

  “Much like no one can feel the storms?” Lilith asked, looking out over the distance, and the thunder rumbled, crackling around, feeling that power.

  “I can’t feel the storms,” he said. “Not any differently than anyone else.”

  Lilith looked over at him. “You are here for a reason. You must understand what you can do so that you can seal the lock once again. When you do, you can return. Those are the terms of your stay with me.”

  With that, Lilith passed him, heading down the tower.

  Sam lingered for a moment, feeling the energy of the storm crackling around him for a moment.

  Those are the terms?

  How was he supposed to do that?

  Sam had no idea, no idea what she wanted from him, no idea what he could do.

  Other than try to feel that power. What choice did he have?

  Others had told him there was some power within him, but Sam had not felt it. And if there was something, and if he could not return until he learned of it, then it was time for him to get to work. It was time for him to study.

  And that was something Sam could do.

  Chapter Twelve

  The storms continued unabated, raging in the distance. Sam stood in the window, looking out over the landscape, still unable to tell whether this was the Barlands or if this was some other place, and she had only tried to mislead him. Every so often, a streak of lightning danced in the sky. He couldn’t deny that he felt some pulsing within the vrandal every time, but it was more than just the pulsing within the vrandal that he felt. There was pulsing within him.

  That was the strangest part of all for him. Why should he detect something within himself when the storms raged?

  He didn’t know, and he didn’t know if there was some secret that he had not yet found or if this was simply some trick. More likely than not, it was a trick.

  His mind kept racing over what he had learned, trying to understand the power that Lilith wanted him to understand, the ability that he had, but he continued to fail.

  Lilith believed him capable of succeeding.

  He should be thrilled with that. There was a part of him was, the part of him that had always wanted reassurance that he could be something more than what he had been before, but there was another part of him that knew it was dangerous to rely upon someone like Lilith, somebody who had brought him here to use him. He shouldn’t be chasing her validation.

  But there was another part of him that felt drawn here. It was the part of him that had wanted magic, wanted to understand how to use power, and had always wished that he could do what his sister could. It was the part of him that had always believed that his knowledge combined with her ability would make for a formidable arcane artist.

  And there was what Tara had believed about him. Tara had felt that Sam had some potential and that it was just a matter of finding it.

  Sam wasn’t sure if he believed that or if what he could do was not at all the same as what she could do.

  He turned his attention back to the almanac. This was where he would find his answers. Lilith had not separated him from the vrandal or from the almanac. For some reason, that seemed to be significant.

  Lilith had not needed her vrandal to translate the words, though she had one.

  Which meant that he had to use something within himself.

  The vrandal was a tool of alchemy, but Lilith suggested that he didn’t need it.

  What she suggested was that there was some part of him that had power. And it was his power, combined with the vrandal, which had unlocked the seal holding Rasan Tel. And if he failed to learn what he needed to close it once again, that lock would remain open, and that power wou
ld eventually destroy all of Olway.

  Sam started going through the book. His mind wandered as he flipped through the pages, trying to understand something within it, but he could not find anything. He had studied these pages long before coming here and had memorized many sections of them.

  He got up from the almanac and turned to the window again.

  As it had lately, the vrandal pulsed in his hand, the power seemed to twist in time with his heartbeat. It felt like it coordinated with the storms around him.

  Lilith wanted him to find answers.

  But he wasn’t going to find them on his own.

  She wanted to be stubborn and wanted to be mysterious, but he would force her to work with him. That was going to be the only way that he would find the answers that he needed to escape.

  Sam scooped the almanac off the table and headed to the door. It was unlocked. It had rarely been locked, though the barrier around it had made it difficult for him to go anywhere.

  He stepped out into the hall.

  He had wandered through this tower with Lilith, just enough to know where he was going. It reminded him of the Academy, but only in its age, and in the overall feel the building had, one that struck him as something of power, not actually in the design, or in the hallways that he knew were here. There had to be some way through here, though, maybe hidden halls, something like the Study Hall, but he had not seen any sign of it.

  When he reached the stairs, he headed down. She had kept him higher in the tower lately, wanting him to have access to the window as if the storms mattered. Maybe that was some way for him to learn about what she believed he could do.

  Why wouldn’t she teach him, though?

  After descending the stairs a little while longer, he reached a wider hallway, with lanterns glowing along it, giving off some light. He had been here once before.

  He hurried along the hall and found a set of double doors. He paused there. Strangely, he could feel something. It was power.

  It surprised him that he could feel that power.

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed one of the doors open. The room wasn’t nearly as large as he’d expected, given the kind of doors leading into it, but the power he detected here was incredible. Light filled the space, a mixture of natural light and what seemed to come from a series of lanterns arranged around the room. The power he’d detected, he realized, mainly came from the lanterns. They were the same type of lantern he’d seen Daven use in Tavran.

  Lilith stood in the middle of the room and spoke to someone. She looked over at him when he entered. The lanterns flickered. Then darkened.

  The power he’d detected faded slowly. “What was that?”

  “What brought you here?” she asked him.

  “I felt something.”

  “Did you?”

  Sam stepped into the room, sweeping his gaze around at the lanterns. They weren’t all like the one he’d seen in the hidden room within Tavran, but near enough. The white light they’d emitted when he’d first come into the room had been the same as the light from Daven’s lantern.

  “Who were you speaking to?”

  Lilith cocked her head to the side. “Do you see anyone else here?”

  Sam nodded toward one of the lanterns. “I don’t need to see anyone here for you to be talking to someone. I’ve been around something like these before.” He stopped in front of a lantern. It was made of iron, with a milky glass over it as far as he could tell. A hint of residual power remained, though he couldn’t tell if Lilith was trying to hold on to some connection or whether that was his imagination. “They allow you to communicate with someone from a distance.”

  “I think you’re mistaken.”

  Sam reached out, holding the vrandal up to the lantern. He pulled on power and let some of it trickle out from him and into the lantern. He looked over at Lilith as he did, half expecting her to say something to stop him, but she didn’t. Instead, she watched.

  He turned his attention back to the lantern, studying it. As he let power flow from him into the lantern, there came pressure against him. The resistance was too much. Sam lowered his hand and looked at Lilith again.

  “What did you think would happen?” she asked.

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t really know. I’ve seen a lantern like this before. When I was in Tavran.” He held his hand up again, channeling a hint of a green light from the vrandal. Resistance from the lantern pushed against his hand, forcing him back.

  “You aren’t accessing it quite right,” Lilith said softly.

  He turned to her. “What do I need to do differently?”

  She pressed her hands together. Energy began to build within her and radiated outward, flowing toward the lantern. Sam tried to mimic what she did, but the power she pulled was not through the vrandal.

  “How do you reach that power?” Sam asked. “You have me here, trapped in the tower, but you haven’t been working with me to understand how to open myself to that power. It seems to me that the answer is there, but you just haven’t shared it.”

  Lilith turned to him. “Each person must find their own connection,” she said.

  Sam shook his head. “That’s not how it works. In the Academy, we are taught how to access the arcane arts, using different techniques, angulation, and—”

  “This is not the Academy,” she said, shaking her head. “And the technique to access the power that you are searching for is different here. I understand that when it is utilized that it feels similar, but it is different. It is natural. It is a part of the world. That is what you must find.”

  It was nothing like the lessons that he had in the Academy. Those lessons seemed logical to him. At least some of them did. Angulation made sense to him. While studying there, he could learn about how to push power out at specific angles, rotating it, twisting informing patterns that made perfect sense to his logical mind. What she was describing was something much more nebulous.

  He didn’t care for that. He didn’t want the kind of power that required him to control it through feel, trusting that some natural order of the world would help him use it.

  And he didn’t have the sense that Lilith used it that way.

  “There is more to it,” he said.

  “Until you can call upon it, you must think of it as nothing more than the source.”

  “The source?” Was she referencing the almanac now? Maybe there was something else to it.

  He looked over to the lanterns, remembering how Daven had used it to communicate with some other alchemist. This had to be something similar, which meant that maybe he could learn how to do it.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked again.

  “There are others. Much like there are other places.”

  “Places that have books like this?” Sam held out the tome, and Lilith’s gaze drifted down toward it before looking back up at him.

  “Because I knew a man, an alchemist, who used a similar lantern to communicate with others who oppose the Nighlan. If they are working with you—”

  “Your alchemists are not working with me.”

  Sam frowned. If they didn’t work together, then maybe he had made a mistake with Lilith. The alchemists had been trying to keep the Nighlan out of Olway. They had been working on behalf of the Academy, on behalf of true alchemy, to defend Olway from the Nighlan.

  “And who are you working with?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

  “I need to understand. I need to really understand what you’re asking of me.” He held out the vrandal before slipping it off. When he did, he didn’t feel that much different. There was still that sense of power around him, crackling energy that he believed was tied to the energy within the air coming out of the Barlands. Even as he felt it, Sam wasn’t able to detect anything more. It was almost as if that power, while there, was too difficult for him to grasp and too difficult for him to comprehend fully.

  “You know what you must do.”

  “And wha
t about you? What do you have to do?”

  She smiled tightly. “My task is no different than yours.”

  Lilith paced around the room. As she passed each lantern, it started to glow softly. One by one, power radiated from them, and one by one, they burst into a soft light. Sam trailed behind her, watching as she called upon that power, but he couldn’t tell anything from what she was doing.

  The lantern nearest her continued to glow. He stood in front of it, staring at it, then held his vrandal up and began to build power.

  Lilith touched his wrist. “Not like that,” she said softly.

  “How would you have me do it?”

  “Not like that,” she repeated. She pressed her fingers together, and once again, there came a sense of energy. “You need to focus on the source within you.”

  “You said that before.”

  “It doesn’t make it any less true.”

  Sam sighed. “I don’t know how to focus on the source within me. I didn’t know I had any source of power.”

  “When did you learn?”

  He still wasn’t entirely sure of it. “After we stopped the first Nighlan attack.”

  “After?”

  Sam shook his head. “Perhaps not. During. Daven helped me learn that I had power.”

  It wasn’t only Daven, though. Bethal had described how magic could be dammed, that if it were contained in a specific pattern, it would continue to build, searching for a way out. That was the only reason Sam had any understanding about what happened to him.

  He had always had magic, he’d learned. After the attack, he’d come to believe the vrandal permitted him to reach it and call that power outward, but maybe that wasn’t even necessary. It was within him.

  “As I said, you must reach for the source. You have to find your own focus.”

  “What’s your focus?” he asked.

  “Mine will be different than yours. What works for me is unlikely to work for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because what works for me is something familiar to me.”

  “The storms.”

  She shook her head. “No, they are not familiar to me.”

  “I thought you were from the Barlands.”