“They attacked,” Sam explained. “They aren’t gone either. Something sent some of the Nighlan away.”
“I did,” said a familiar voice in the distance.
Sam turned toward it. “Lilith?”
Next to him, Tara stiffened.
Lilith strode forward, her hand glowing with a soft green light. She was using her own vrandal.
Sam took a step toward her. “I thought you were—”
“Not dead.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought that I would make sure that you locked the seal, but I also refused to allow the Nighlan to destroy another place.”
Sam glanced over to Tara. “We locked it. It takes arcane arts and whatever I can use. The source.”
Sam realized there were others around him. Others who had power like hers, a friction of power that he could feel. It was the source.
They were like him.
“We will take this one,” Lilith said, taking a step toward Bethal.
Two men strode toward Bethal and reached through the barrier Sam and Tara had placed. They grabbed the former Grandam, and then with another burst of power, all three disappeared.
Lilith paused by Sam. “You did well. You could learn much more if you want.” Lilith eyed Havash and Tara before turning to Sam again. “You don’t belong here. This isn’t your place. We could teach you.”
Tara grabbed Sam’s arm and squeezed.
Lilith took a step back and chuckled. “When you’re ready, you know how to find us.” Power built from her, and when it burst, she was gone.
“Who was that?” Tara asked.
“That’s who abducted me. Who taught me about the power that I have. And who apparently had been trying to protect another lock.”
But if Bethal and the other Nighlan had gotten to the tower, had they succeeded?
But if Lilith still lived, it meant that the lock could be closed once again. It meant that she could have sealed off once more.
That had to be enough. It had to.
Sam looked around. There were others in the garden, but all members of the Academy. All of them were holding onto lines of power that pressed out from them and drifted away, a pattern to it. There was a part of Sam tempted to reach into what they were doing and add to the barrier, but he didn’t.
“You must return to your studies, Samran.”
Sam looked over to Havash. “It’s not arcane arts,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” Havash said, and a troubled expression crossed his brow. “And perhaps the alchemists have always known this. I will have to look into it. For now, hold onto the almanac. Hold onto the device. And try to understand what you can control.”
“I can stay?”
“Did you fear that you would not be permitted?”
Sam sighed. “I didn’t know. I feel like I am different.” He looked over to where Lilith had disappeared. Others were like him. There was another place that he could go. Another way that he could learn.
But he could still learn something here.
The alchemist had known about the arcane arts, but they had also understood this power. He was certain of it.
“You may stay. You will be tested no differently than any other student. I suspect no differently than any alchemist who has come before you.”
Sam smiled. “I’m not so sure that it’s like any alchemist.”
“Perhaps not. We lost too much in the destruction of the tower. It must be rebuilt.” He turned, nodding to Chasten, who was near one of the walls, securing several alchemy items around it as if he were adding to the barrier. Then he headed away.
Sam frowned to himself.
The battle had started to fade. He could feel it.
He didn’t need to investigate to know that the Nighlan were gone. At least for now. As far as he could tell, the Nighlan attack on the city was over. How long they would stay away was another matter. Now that he had locked the seal again, he still didn’t know if Rasan Tel had been freed. Regardless, the Academy would remain a target.
All he knew was that, for the moment, they were safe.
Tara found him looking at the spot where Lilith had disappeared. “She’s pretty.”
He eyed her. “She captured me.”
“Did you like it?”
“I learned how to reach for my own source.”
Tara grabbed his arm again. “It sounds like she’s offering to teach you.”
Sam nodded, the distant sound of the storm growing fainter, the thunder fading.
“Well?”
He turned to Tara. “Well, what?”
“What are you going to do?”
He didn’t truly fit in the Academy. He had come because of circumstance, stayed because of his mind, and had uncovered a part of himself that he hadn’t even realized existed. Now he knew about a power that he possessed and a magic that he wanted to understand. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could do it within the Academy.
The only part that held him here was that he suspected the truly powerful alchemists had access to the same power that he did. Not like the students of alchemy who were now trying to occupy the tower. How much of the arcane arts could those powerful alchemists command?
Maybe little to none.
And if that were the case, perhaps they were more like him.
He might find answers here, but he would find answers with Lilith. He was certain of that.
But he wasn’t ready. Not yet. He still thought he could find something here. He still thought that he needed to.
“Let’s go back inside,” he said.
“Sam?”
He looked over at her. “I’m where I need to be.”
“Where you need to be, or where you want to be?”
He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m where I want to be.”
Thunder rumbled again, and he found his attention drawn to it, almost as if it were pulling on him. Lilith had said that he would know how to find her. He wasn’t sure that was true, but there was a part of him that thought he only had to follow the thunder.
Would he need to eventually? To better understand his magic and what it meant for him, was that where he had to go?
Tara squeezed his arm and pulled him toward her, making him look at her.
Sam forced a smile. “Come on. Havash will need us.”
Tara watched him with a troubled look in her eyes, though Sam wasn’t exactly sure what it was, and he wasn’t at all sure how to help her. Maybe there wasn’t anything that he could do or say at this point. He had returned, and that seemed enough. At least for now.
Maybe that was part of the problem. She knew that eventually he would need to try to find answers about what he could do. The kind of power that he had. What it meant for him, and what it meant for alchemy. Unless there was an alchemist here, Sam wasn’t exactly sure that he would find those answers.
For now, he would stay. There were some answers here. Alchemy had existed. The vrandal had been here. The almanac had been here.
More than that, the seal that trapped Rasan Tel was here. It suggested to Sam that whoever was responsible for it knew much more than he had learned. Perhaps it was the alchemists, or perhaps there was another explanation. Either way, he felt as if he needed to learn, but if he couldn’t, he knew where he could go.
He knew where he might have to go.
As they headed back into the Academy, he looked over to Tara, and found that same troubled look in her eyes.
Thunder rumbled distantly, the sound of a storm bringing its power toward him. It was either reassuring, that of some connection to the source, or it was a threat. He didn’t know which.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The dining hall was as busy as always. Sam sat with his tray resting in front of him, picking at his food. It was far better than anything he had been given while he was trapped with Lilith, but there was something to be said about the simplicity of life there. It had been forced time working with the sour
ce, time where he had nothing more than to try to focus on what he could do, the power within himself, and trying to understand the almanac.
“Are you going to tell me what you were involved in?”
Sam looked over to James. He had been quiet. Partly because Tara hadn’t come to sit and eat, but partly because he wasn’t exactly sure what to say to James.
He felt as if he needed to say something, though.
“The Nighlan abducted me,” he said. That was the story that Havash had wanted him to share. It wasn’t true, though Havash still wasn’t sure what to make of Lilith and those with her. Not alchemists, but not Nighlan either. “I had been outside of the city on an errand for Havash. That’s where they grabbed me.”
That was the other part of the story that he was supposed to share. He had made a point of speaking loud enough for others to hear. An errand for Havash served several purposes. Not the least in that it set Sam up as having a relationship with Havash, which had some value. But it also made it clear that the Academy was not in any danger. Havash wanted to ensure that the students didn’t think they were unsafe remaining within the Academy. There were enough parents of Academy students who had been tempted to pull their students from the Academy, though where would they have gone? Sam couldn’t imagine where he would go. Then again, he had no place to go. He couldn’t return to Erstan, back to the Barlands, or anywhere other than here.
“Even though you knew they weren’t attacking the Academy?”
“Havash had thought that I would be safe,” Sam said. “He hadn’t thought that they had breached the borders of the city.”
And they shouldn’t have.
They had already learned that others in the city had betrayed the Academy. Ben. Bethal. How many others? He suspected there were more than what they knew, but the real challenge was rooting them out.
That was one more thing Havash asked him to be a part of.
It was something Sam wasn’t sure that he could. But as a student, he could watch vices that Havash could not, even if Sam didn’t have the same access as some students. He was isolated simply because of who he was and where he had come from. Havash might not see it, but Sam knew that. It might be time to bring James deeper into what they were doing.
It would involve sharing secrets with him.
Now it felt almost too late, though. If he shared the truth of himself, was he no longer trusting James the way he would have had he revealed his truth when he truly had no power? Sam did have his own magic now, even if he wasn’t entirely sure how to control it. He was learning, though. The source was there within him, ever-present, bubbling up within him and requiring little more than a connection to use. There were enough of the angulation techniques that were effective for him that he used when it came to the source that he now felt as if he had a practical approach to it.
“I can’t believe you are friendly with the Grandam.”
“I don’t know if you can really be friendly with him,” Sam said with a small smile. “I think we are on reasonable terms. That might be the best way to put it.”
“Reasonable terms,” James said, laughing. “You are, and on more than just reasonable terms if he’s sending you on errands.”
Somebody else took a seat at the table, and Sam leaned forward to see who it was. Not Tara.
“And what’s this about you getting access to the alchemy tower?”
Sam grunted. The alchemy tower hadn’t fully reopened yet, but that was coming. They didn’t have their own table in the dining hall, and the students who spent time in the alchemy tower were still assigned to their own tower, but increasingly, they were spending more and more time in that space. Chasten worked with them and claimed that he was a caretaker, but what would happen if a true alchemist returned to the Academy?
“I’ve had an interest in alchemy,” he said with a shrug. “Before I came to the Academy, I was trying to work with one of the minor alchemists.”
“You told me that, but,” he leaned forward, lowering his voice, “there hasn’t been a first-year student to have spent any time in the alchemy tower since Bellendar. That was something like fifty years ago. He was said to be one of the greatest alchemists—and users of the arcane arts—that the Academy has seen in centuries.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Sam said. He squeezed his hand around the vrandal. He still wore it, mostly because he wasn’t sure what else to do with it. He couldn’t leave it in his pocket. That didn’t feel quite right with a device as powerful as the vrandal, but he also didn’t need it. “It’s not like I have abandoned the tolath tower. I’m still spending my time there.”
He laughed. “You have never spent any time there. Well, rarely. And certainly not lately. Now that the library is reopening, you won’t even feel compelled to come back.”
“I will always come back,” he said. He looked over to the sharan table. Mia sat amidst a group of first-year students. He hadn’t the opportunity to pull her away from her other classmates to have a chance to talk with her since he had returned and felt as if he had missed out on an opportunity. She needed his help. “Could you do me a favor?” He looked over to James, who was stuffing a bite of Apple into his mouth. “Do you see the dark-haired sharan girl over there? Seated next to Emily and Diana?”
“Mianna?”
“That’s right,” Sam said.
James frowned at him. “She’s a little young for you. I think Tara might be upset if she learns that you go chasing after some younger first-year student.”
“I just want you to ask her to meet me in the library.”
“Why?”
Now was when he had to start telling the truth. Now was when he needed to start sharing with James. He would need friends, especially with what Havash wanted from him. There were many things it would be better accomplished with help, and he wasn’t going to be able to do it without James’s assistance.
Sam breathed out. “I need to tell you some things, but not the least of which is that I didn’t come to the Academy alone.”
“You what?”
James stopped chewing, and he rested his arms on the table.
“When I saw Gresham’s reaction to where I came from, we decided to keep the rest secret. We thought that it would be safest that way.”
“You and who?”
“Me and my sister.”
James looked over to where Mia sat eating. She was quiet, practically somber, yet the others around her were more boisterous, talking, laughing, and generally happy.
“She’s your sister,” he said, his voice soft. “I suppose I can see it now.” He turned back to Sam. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There was hurt in the question.
“I haven’t told many people. Well, only one person.”
“Tara?”
“She knew. When I was hurt in the infirmary, she went to Mia.”
“Mia?”
“That’s what I call her. Of course, she uses my full name.”
“I didn’t realize that Sam wasn’t your full name.” James picked up another slice of apple, started chewing. “What is it, then?”
“Samran.”
James chuckled. “Sounds like a Barlands name to me.”
“You’re not mad then?”
“Well, I guess I’m disappointed that you didn’t feel like you couldn’t tell me, but I get it. I saw what happened with you and how hard you had it. Our tower doesn’t have that many people, so you really haven’t been isolated from that many. And once you and Tara started spending time together,” he said, grinning at him, “it didn’t really matter, did it?”
“I suppose not,” Sam chuckled. “But the sharan tower is different. There are quite a few more people, and the personalities there are a little harder to get along with. So I understand.” He paused. “Don’t tell anyone, will you?”
“So this is our secret?”
Sam nodded. “If you can keep it.”
James snorted. “I can keep secrets. That’s one thing t
hat I’m good at.” He took another bite of the apple, and then looked up at Sam. “What did you need to meet her for?”
“Help her study,” he said. “Before I was abducted, I promised that I would help her. It seems like she’s having a hard time with some of her collapses.”
“How is it possible that you are siblings, but she doesn’t have the same mind for the arcane arts that you do?”
“Because she has all the talent for the arcane arts.”
James snorted. “Fair enough. Say, are you going to join us in the great hall later? We have a game night planned. I figured you’ve been gone enough that you might want to join us.”
It had been only a few days since the Nighlan attack, and in that time, the Academy had generally started to fall back into a routine. Classes had resumed, meals had been normal, and students had begun to overlook the time that they had been quarantined to their room.
Most of them had.
Some, like Gresham, probably wouldn’t forget what Sam and Tara had done. Then there was Tracen. Sam wasn’t sure what to make of him or what would happen, as he hadn’t spent any time back in the alchemy tower, despite what he had said to James.
“Maybe not tonight,” he said. “I have a few things I need to work on. Once I do, I will be there. As long as you want me.”
“Want you? You did hear what I said, didn’t you? The youngest invited to the alchemy tower in fifty years?” He grinned at Sam. “I know you feel like your Barlands heritage has set you apart, but enough people understand just how impressive that is that they don’t care.”
Maybe some good would come out of that after all, then.
He got up, replaced his tray, glanced over to the table, and still didn’t see any sign of Tara.
He watched his sister at the table. She was quiet. Practically glum. He hated seeing her like that. It wasn’t like Mia.
Sam had not been back to the library since it had reopened. He made his way there now. The hours were what they had been when he had first come, and as he reached the library, stepping inside, he paused.
Everything was similar to what he remembered, though there were enough differences that Sam felt as though it were a different library. The air had the musty odor of the library and the pleasing smell of old books, that of the leather spines, ancient paper, and even the dust that he knew would be found on shelves. All of it appealed to him.
Alchemist Illusion (The Alchemist Book 3) Page 25
