He wondered if that power would allow him to defend himself if he were in a different situation, but he didn’t know if that was even necessary. The barrier would protect him, and forming one took the least amount of power. The other techniques all required much more energy, and he felt the way that power seeped out from him. He had to be careful, and it was part of the reason he’d started to take naps to replenish his strength.
Sam lost track of how long he had been working. With the dark sky outside the window, there wasn’t much change to go by.
Several times he’d been interrupted by somebody bringing him a tray of food. Sam picked at the food and ate slowly, his mind still working through what he’d learned within the almanac. He needed to eat, though, mostly because he could feel some part of him deflating. It was the power required by the magic he was drawing on. Strange that he would be so attuned to it.
He practiced each technique multiple times before moving on to another. Each time he practiced one, he had a better sense of how to use it. The real challenge would be accessing the source under duress.
As he sat in the room and relaxed as much as he could, there was no stress upon him. He didn’t feel any difficulty or pressure to try to reach into the source. All he knew was that he had to reach into the source, find a way to master that connection that he had to have and be able to use that through the vrandal to seal the lock and ensure that Rasan Tel didn’t escape.
He found his mind drifting.
Maybe that was because of the energy that he felt out and around him, that of the source, even if he couldn't fully figure out how to connect to it. It reminded him of home. Erstan. When he had been with his sister, wanting nothing more than to protect her, to keep her from revealing her power so that she caused danger to others around her, but it also reminded him of when he was younger. He would wander with their parents out beyond the village, heading toward the hills of the Barlands. They had never gone into the Barlands themselves. That was dangerous, and his parents had never brought them that far, not wanting to expose them to the risk of doing so.
Still, now he could feel something. He could feel that power as if it were coursing through him.
How long had he wanted magic like Mia possessed?
His whole life. There had always been a longing, wanting to find the same kind of power that she so effortlessly maintained. When he had gone to the Academy, he had been so close to magic, and he had learned so much about it that he had started to let himself believe that maybe it was possible. Especially when he had found the vrandal, there had been even more reason to believe he could use that power.
Another flash of lightning came, and Sam pulled his mind away.
He turned his attention back to the almanac and flipped to another page. When he had gone through the first few pages, there hadn’t been any way for him to know just what each technique would do, but the longer he worked, the more he had a sense of what those patterns created. Now when he skimmed the page, he had a better idea of how each technique would be useful.
These patterns were different now that he no longer needed the vrandal to teach him the key to it. It was almost as if alchemy through the vrandal had allowed him to open things for the arcane arts, but what was he unlocking when he read these same patterns?
They were different than what he had read for Tara. Hers had some offensive type spells, but the ones he had managed had been more defensive. Protective.
There were some patterns that Sam could use in aggressive manners. The spiral pattern that struck the walls could certainly be used like that.
He had considered using angulation before, wondering if it might offer him something more than what he had managed so far, but he had refrained, thinking that perhaps it made more sense for him to use the patterns as they were described.
But why did he have to do that?
Why must he ignore everything that he had learned at the Academy? There were much more that he knew. Much that he understood about angulation, power, and everything he had come to know about the arcane arts.
Regardless of what Lilith had claimed about her power, Sam thought there had to be a logical approach to this kind of magic as well. And the almanac confirmed that.
He kept reading through the page, trying to find answers.
He reached the end of the page, trying to find a way to control it, but his strength faded, and the power started to drift outward from him. This time, rather than him being able to release it slowly, the power exploded and slammed into the walls around him. The barrier around the room forced that power back inward, and it blasted into Sam, knocking him from the chair.
His head hit the stone, and he blacked out.
Chapter Sixteen
Sam came around slowly as he lay on the ground, his head throbbing. Everything within him hurt.
He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea rolled through him. He leaned over and retched violently until it passed. Taking a deep breath, Sam attempted to sit up again. He winced as his head throbbed with every movement.
The only thing he could do was try to roll over and get to his hands and knees. Closing his eyes made it a little bit better. He tried to slow his panting and settle his stomach by breathing in and out with easy, deliberate breaths.
There was a sense of energy around him. It took him a moment to realize that it came from the thunder and lightning that created tension and put him on edge. He ignored the gnawing sensation that vibrated through him. All he could do was focus on everything else within him to try to get past what had happened.
A memory of what happened came back to him. It had been his fault. He had released power because he didn’t have complete control over it yet. It had bounced off the barrier along the walls and slammed into him.
Sam slowly rose to his feet and leaned on the table for support. The almanac was still there, turned to the page where he had left off. He struggled to make out the words on the page, almost as if they were blurry. That had more to do with the injury that he’d sustained than anything else.
His head continued to throb. It felt as if he’d been in a fight—and lost. The steady sound of thunder didn’t make it any better. With each rumble in the distance, the throbbing in his head surged with a vengeance. He tried to ignore it, but the pounding persisted, making it difficult for him to do anything more.
Sam took a seat in front of the almanac and skimmed the page. He’d been working on something he didn’t fully understand. He recognized most of the patterns even without knowing how to use them, but not this one.
That had been his mistake. Had he waited, he might have been able to figure out what the page described, rather than calling upon power he didn’t have any control over.
Sam took a deep breath, leaning his head back. The throbbing lessened the longer he sat up. The nausea seemed to retreat.
That sense of needing to reach into the source was still there. It bubbled within him, though Sam wasn’t sure whether there was something more to uncover. He tried to focus on the sense of the source, the way that power flowed within him, but the ongoing sensation of nausea made chasing it difficult. When he managed to find a sense of it, he became aware that what he detected wasn’t nearly as drained as it had been before he’d passed out.
How long had he been unconscious? If only the storms didn’t make it so difficult to get a grasp of time.
Sam sat at the table for a while, not wanting to get up. The moment he moved, another sense of nausea worked through him. He nearly retched a dozen times, but each time he felt that sense coming over him, he tried to ignore it. Most of the time, he could settle his stomach and force the rising vomit back down.
Another violent wave of nausea hit him as he leaned forward. Without thinking, Sam raced to the window, shoving his head out and heaving along the stones. Wind brushed along his face, helping somewhat.
He blinked.
The barrier was gone.
He tried to clear his mind, but that wasn’t happening nearl
y as quickly as he needed. If he had somehow removed the barrier, did that mean the one around the door was also gone?
Sam leaned on the windowsill, steadying himself. With each passing moment, he could feel the nausea easing, and he stepped unsteadily back into the center of the room. He staggered toward the door. His balance was terrible, but he forced himself to ignore it. He looked down, but on the ground, he didn’t see the guards that he knew had been there before. Whatever was going on had taken them away from him. There were no more guards here.
Now that he’d made some progress and the barriers were down, there’s nothing stopping him from leaving. He needed to get back to the Academy.
He reached the door and pulled it open.
The barrier around it was gone.
He had done it. Perhaps not intentionally, but he had done it.
Sam scooped the almanac off the table and walked into the hall. He was still unsteady. The longer he was awake, the easier it was for him to stay on his feet, but the unsteadiness didn’t ease. He staggered through the halls, every so often needing to pause and lean on the wall for support. There wasn’t anyone in the hall, so he didn’t have to hide—or use any of the new patterns he’d discovered he could now use.
He moved carefully, his head still throbbing. He tried to follow the source.
Sam reached a stairway at the end of the hall and started to climb down. Walking down the stairs was more difficult than anything else. Each step left him teetering on the edge, almost as if he were going to tumble all the way down, but he managed to stay on his feet. There wasn’t a railing, though he would have appreciated one.
When he reached the next landing, Sam looked along the hallway. There was still no one around. Nothing. When he had been through here before, Sam had seen patrols within the tower. There wasn’t anyone now. It wasn’t anything here now.
And that struck him as odd.
Sam headed down once more and again paused at the next landing to look around. His vision started to clear, and the throbbing within his head eased a little bit.
He headed down another flight of stairs. At the next landing, he leaned on the wall for a long moment. His head pounded, and the storm thundered in the distance.
No, not the storm.
He looked up as two men raced toward him. He didn’t recognize the jackets they wore and didn’t recognize the crests on their lapels. They were not like those within the tower—and not like anyone that he had seen before.
His heart hammered for a moment. Only one thing came to mind. One possibility, but it seemed impossible to consider.
Nighlan.
He had come to believe that this place was not a stronghold of the Nighlan. And he didn’t believe that it was, so for them to be here, it meant something had gone wrong.
His mind started to work through what he needed to do.
Get to the lanterns. Summon Chasten or somebody within the alchemy tower for help.
More than that, he had to hold onto the source.
They were a dozen paces from Sam when he hurriedly created a barrier.
It was the first pattern he thought he could use and the easiest for him to grasp.
He forced away from himself and then hurriedly inverted it.
The men slammed into the barrier. Sam hadn’t been sure whether it was even going to be effective. In the confines of the small room in the tower, he had been able to practice with it, but he hadn’t been able to test it.
They attempted to fight through the barrier, but Sam found that it was easy enough for him to maintain it.
What he needed was some way to push them back. He thought through what he had learned in the almanac, and there was one particular pattern he could use, an extension of this one. Sam twisted the inverted circle and spun it back out in a spiral. He held his breath, not entirely sure how it would affect these two.
The power struck them, and they were thrown back into the wall. Their heads slammed against the stone, and both of them collapsed.
Sam studied them for a moment, worried he’d killed them, but their chests rose and fell. He took a deep breath of his own and started toward the stairs. He remained on edge as he reached the next landing, but he didn’t see anyone else coming toward him.
The nausea seemed to be clearing, the throbbing in his head easing. Surprisingly, both disappeared the longer he held on to the source, almost as if he was allowing himself to recover. He hurried down the stairs, moving much more quickly and steadily now.
Where was Lilith? Where were the others with her? Something must’ve happened to them.
The Nighlan must have targeted them.
Three men waited down the hall, dressed the same as the two he had just attacked.
More Nighlan.
He saw one man with black hair, a thick black beard, and chocolate skin. He looked nothing like those within Olway. The other two with him were equally foreign. They seem to notice him and came racing toward him.
Sam couldn’t see any sign of the arcane arts coming out of them, though they had to have power of some sort. The Nighlan were known to have power.
He wrapped himself in a barrier, and as they neared him, he spun it outward. It struck them, and two of them bounced away. The third one drew upon some power of his own, creating a similar buffer around him. It was faintly green as if he could not invert it completely and remove the coloration of the barrier itself.
The man pulled something from his pocket, glowing with a soft green light.
Alchemy.
Sam didn’t wait. He immediately tried to invert the barrier again, but the man had used some part of his alchemy to prevent him.
Power slammed into him.
Sam lost his hold on his barrier.
He scrambled away, thinking about what other techniques he could utilize. There was a strange and difficult one that might be effective. Sam twisted the power, spiraling that pattern outward. The magic slammed into the man and threw him back.
The man got to his feet quickly and staggered forward, slicing a burst of energy through the power Sam was holding. Sam tried to hang on to it a little bit longer, but the man had more technique. He pushed at him with a hint of a barrier that forced Sam back toward the stairs.
Sam needed strength. And the element of surprise. He reached for the source, trying to create one of the patterns he had seen in the almanac, but every time he lashed out at the man, his attacks had no effect.
This man was far more skilled than Sam. Sam had been working through the almanac, and while he had memorized much of it, he did not have practice.
There was a significant difference between book intelligence and practical intelligence. What he needed now was experience.
He was forced down the stairs, nearly stumbling but caught himself. When he reached the next landing, two people almost seemed as if they were waiting for him. Several others stood around them, and the power he detected from them left a tingling sense that swept along his skin. They were turned away, watching the staircase in the opposite direction.
They must have been following others in that direction. Other attackers, perhaps. Others within the tower.
Maybe even Lilith.
Surprisingly, that bothered him. There was no reason that it should. They had captured him, held him here, and it forced him to… What, exactly? Uncover some hidden part of himself that revealed a store of power that he hadn’t even known existed?
Sam maintained the connection to the power deep within him and hurriedly thrust power outward in a circle. With every bit of energy he used, he could feel himself starting to fade, but he could knock them back.
Something struck him, throwing him back against the wall. Despite how rattled he was, Sam tried to peel himself away from the wall, but the barrier holding him was stronger than he was. The two men had been joined by a third—the one he’d faced on the upper level—and moved even closer.
A sense of energy radiated from the man approaching him. Sam could feel that power and
the way it pushed against him. He needed to find a way to reach into the source, but doing that while distracted proved difficult. He also had to overwhelm the pressure against him.
Would something in the almanac work? He thought through several different techniques that he had read about within the Academy, techniques that he’d never had an opportunity to actually do anything about, but they were techniques that were still in his mind. He had memorized many of them long ago but had never thought that he would have an opportunity to use them and do anything with them. Even now, he wasn’t entirely sure that he would be able to do much of anything. He didn’t have the arcane arts. He didn’t know if this connection to the source would be enough for him.
Thunder rumbled distantly again and rolled through the tower. Sam felt the vibrations, the power that flowed through it. He could practically feel when the lightning followed, even if he couldn’t see it.
A surge of strength came to him. Reaching into the source, he began to focus. He thought about the lessons of the almanac, the way they had instructed him to create a circle of power and push it out from him. There were several similar techniques, and Sam wondered if he might be able to twist them together to create a barrier and use in an attack.
The man was nearly to him while the others stood off to the side, waiting. A dark sneer twisted the features on his face. Sam could feel power continuing to build from him, an energy that was too much. He tried to ignore it but couldn’t. He couldn’t let the man get too close.
Sam pushed the source out from him but felt it start to slip. He immediately solidified it, and rather than pulling it back to reduce its coloration, he turned it and twisted it slightly. In his mind, he saw how he could use the energy and turn the barrier into power that would allow him to attack. It would create an edge to the barrier—one that would be dangerous but one he could use to escape.
Alchemist Illusion (The Alchemist Book 3) Page 16
