The Pact, page 18
part #1 of The Dark Roads Series
And of course, she thought of Jack. He'd said she'd do great things: now she'd live up to his hopes. She recognized it in the quick way fire sparked at her fingers and water sprung up from the earth at her request. Now, she could be great, and she could do all the things the hero of tiewaz could do, could help the people he would never again help.
She'd make her first teacher proud, wherever his spirit now resided.
And each night, she laid out the cards, each night studying just like the little twelve-year-old girl who once studied at the table in the back of the Wolf's Den.
She lost track of the number of weeks that passed by the time she made it back to her old hometown. She didn't know why she'd come back. The wind simply called her here. Her journey had begun here. This was where Jack had been shot. Here, she'd met Rook, and had taken the first steps on the path. So, it only seemed natural this be where the first quest ended, so the second could begin.
Besides. There was the school.
***
The weaver who met Serenity at the school doors had once been a fellow student. She recognized him immediately. Though her own practice had taken place primarily in the Wolf's Den between work hours, the faces of Jack's own peers and of the apprentices who studied the same paths as she still lingered in her mind. This one—a young man her own age, gawky, coltish, with a shock of curly copper hair teetering unbalanced on his head—called her by name as he issued the sign of blessing. So they'd not forgotten her, either.
With D'aej on board, her eyes took in sights in a strangely predatory way, too perceptive and too sharp. As she looked the boy over, she scrutinized his power and prowess, his level of awareness of her. He didn't bat an eye, didn't lift a hand, and motioned for her to follow him, welcoming her back into the fold of the scholarship.
There would be quarters for traveling weavers in the school, and access to all the weaver texts in the libraries. The spell she wanted—the spell she'd sought out the aid of a darkling to find—must reside in one of those books. She never doubted she'd find it here, and once she did, D'aej would help her master it.
And how will you explain to the scholars your sudden interest in such dark and murderous runes? D'aej needled. I suppose you haven't devised any sort of plan for this insanity?
"The plan is simple," she hissed. "They never need to know what I'm looking for."
The copper-haired boy took it upon himself to reacquaint her with the place, introducing her to new students and connecting her with the higher philosophers. D'aej monitored everything and everyone around them, keeping tabs on the reactions, watching the movements, however slight. He kept a constant watch for danger, and to Serenity he buzzed with a very strange—and distracting—energy of thought. It all amounted to more stimuli than he'd ever poured onto their psychic bond before—and it exhausted her. Serenity hardly had time to think of the goal which had brought her back in the first place.
The spell. The one which would steal a man's soul, and destroy him.
Finally, as the sun set over her old hometown, she found herself in the library.
Wake up, fleshling, D'aej snarled. By the living runes, it's hard to believe this pathetic mind managed to trap me. You can't even keep up with a basic level of awareness for your surroundings.
"I'll learn." She kneaded her temple, where the first stirrings of a headache had begun. "You gave me too much."
I had to. You made the idiot decision to bring me among weavers, unenlightened weavers who will kill us both for witchery if they discover what you've done. At least one of us must ensure they aren't about to rope a noose around our necks.
She waved a hand dismissively, searching between stacks for a quiet space or dark corner where they might do their work in peace. "They can't sense you."
All it takes is for one of them to have a single moment of brilliance. A rune for seeing, or for insight. Something they might cast completely by accident in their study, and then we are caught. So let's find the spell you want and leave this place before any such thing happens.
"What are you so afraid of? Aren't you stronger than they are?"
Seething silence. The guttural brown sense of disgust rippled across their bond.
You caged me in a human body. If the body is destroyed, I am destroyed along with it.
As always, other students gathered and pored over their studies together, crowding several tables in the center of the grand archive. As D'aej suspected, they practiced their chains and their runic discoveries, playing with the signs, and Serenity knew exactly how easy it might be for anyone studying the runes of insight to inadvertently see her for what she was. So she avoided them—nothing new there, after all—drifting back into the stacks furthest from their excited whispering.
Do you even have any idea where this book might be kept?
"I think so," she said.
Then let's find it quickly. And leave with it even more quickly.
"You know, you're awfully anxious, little darkling. I hope I didn't end up bonding with a coward."
A shock of bright pain seared across her vision. She stumbled, banging her knees hard on the cold, cruel marble of the floor. She managed to bite her tongue and keep herself from crying out and alerting the other students. The coppery tang of blood filled her mouth.
Do not insult me, you worthless fleshbag. You may hold me now, but give me a chance and I will burn your pathetic mind until there is nothing left!
She laughed, though it came out weak. "C-c-calm d-down, D'aej," she stammered through the throbbing hurt. "Just don't disappoint me."
The darkling fumed, the sense of him a boiling cloud of dark red anger. She tried to ignore it, choking back the urge to vomit, and stood to continue her search. The stacks in the section she chose were dark and musty. The smell of old pages, raspy and dry, yellowed and stiff from age, surrounded her. She adored it. A welcome friend, stable and timeless.
Students and scholars had left evidence of their studies among the books for others to see: tattooed skulls, runic candles, glass jars containing reeking herb pairings or petrified birds, withered and flaked in their airtight prisons. She moved deeper in, into a section of the school rarely explored by the current generations of pupils. Soon, she found what she sought, a thing she'd glimpsed once, many years ago in her early, early training, and never dared cross.
A black tapestry stood before a collection of shelves that seemed to disappear into the darkest, loneliest wing of the library. The banner was embroidered in bright, glittering gold, invoking the rune fehu at her. The rune of beginnings. Below it shone ansuz and raidho. She read their interplay easily. Fehu spoke of construction and destruction, where ansuz stood for divine wisdom, raidho for cosmic laws.
"Here we go," she muttered, more to herself than to D'aej. And she walked into the books beyond.
***
She spent days searching the stacks behind the fehu tapestry, emerging only as required to keep up appearances, and always disappearing again once she found it convenient.
The section hidden near the back of the library proved more amazing than she'd hoped. The books teemed with new spreads, darkling secrets, magic no weaver ever even blithely mentioned in her presence. Magic she knew immediately, almost instinctively. Once past the glittering gold-embroidered sentinel, she brought down tomes like a child choosing her favorite candies. She'd sit on the floor, legs crossed, with a book in her lap for hours, scribbling notes in her journal until her tailbone ached and her neck grew stiff, and still she'd want to read, savoring all the knowledge at her fingertips. She'd never, never been allowed to see such terrific magic before.
"Look at this one," she marveled to D'aej, pulling down a familiar heavy tome, marked with the symbol of the Black Guild on its spine.
D'Shaye's Bible, he hissed back at her, uncharacteristically agreeable. The first tome on demon symbiosis.
"I've read the one Rook had with him, but this one is so much..." She shook her head, searching for the word. "Grander."
The D'Shaye family were the first to embrace the darkest of the runic arts, D'aej purred. The first humans to contract with my kind. Alistair D'Shaye could do things with the runes that your brand of common weaver—even the Black Guild's brightest—can't imagine.
Something like a sigh drifted across their bond, like a gray cloud. It's a tragedy none of his followers have inherited his bloodline's natural mastery. Now even the best weavers are no better than arrogant children playing coloring games with the runes.
"Maybe I'll be the one to surprise you," she said.
A quick shudder, a darkling's derisive laughter, shook the threads of her mind.
"What about this one?" she asked, pulling down another tome. "Runic Imprinting and Wards."
The art of imbuing runes and their power directly onto a target, such as with arcane tattoos or brands. It is not the simple task of inking your runic ‘name', like the pretenders in these realms do, but a deeply painful and irrevocable project to undertake, infusing the marks with deep spiritual energy. Your scholars here would consider it an act of defilement. But in the cities of the Rachalör, arcanists wear the marks of black magic with pride.
All the knowledge, all the magic hidden among these old and disused shelves fascinated Serenity. It practically ensorcelled her, luring her into obsession. Over the next few days, D'aej had to remind her when the time came to leave, and when her mind turned back toward the books before she could visit them in person, D'aej kept her busy. But the darkling, too, could be tempted by the topics and spells in their newfound archive: his previously poisoned tongue grew quiet when they studied, and when she wished to experiment with the lessons laid out before her, he twisted around her mind and paired his power to hers without complaint. Even, perhaps, with a little excitement of his own.
The spell she'd come for, however, constantly eluded her. There were spells that looked right, but never were; there were spells that came close, but none succeeded in doing what she really wanted.
Have you thought about giving up, yet? D'aej hissed to her one night after a long session in the stacks. Serenity's eyes hurt from the strain of close, careful reading. Her whole back throbbed with the pain of sitting on the unforgiving stone floor. Even the darkling inside her felt far too big for her head. But she sent him a negative via their psychic link, and kept reading.
Serenity, it's possible the spell you seek is just not here. It may never have even existed, and what you've heard is only legends and wives' tales.
"You're telling me a darkling can't rip out a man's soul?" she asked, a sharp edge in her voice. "Don't insult me, D'aej. I know you have the power. We just need to find the chain to do it."
The shivering ripple of his exasperation feathered across their bond. You need to sleep.
"I'm fine."
Serenity, we have been here since morning. You missed lunch and the evening observances. You must return to your chambers before someone becomes suspicious and starts looking for us.
"They won't have noticed." She turned another page. "No one's going to bother us."
Putting down the book in her lap—she'd take it with her before going back to her room—she craned her neck to scan the shelves above her one more time. On the third shelf up, there stood an array of black candles, the first six runes of the futhark carved deep into the wax. They sat beside a fat brown tome that looked like it might have been bound in some sort of insectile carapace. She'd read it already and found it useless to her current needs. Above it sat a collection of five smaller, pocket-sized books with human finger-bones along their spines. They had also proven unlucky.
"It's somewhere here," she muttered, touching a finger to her lips. "And even if it isn't... There are other schools."
We would be traveling for months before finding one. There aren't many set in communities like this one, where the weavers can show themselves without fear. Most likely, you will have to root them out the hard way. Or, we can go to the northeast, into Nostra. Take your chance in the midnight lands, and the magicians who study there.
"I will if I have to," she said. The dark memory of the outlaw, the one who'd murdered Jack, flashed before her mind's eye. "We're going to find it, D'aej. There's no question."
And do you intend to read every book here and in every other weaver library before you give up?
She didn't answer right away, still scanning the books, chewing her lip thoughtfully. "It's here."
Her hand drifted to the candles, the ones with the runes carved into them. Fehu, uruz, thurisaz, ansuz, raidho...
And kenaz. The torch rune. The rune for opening.
She bowed her head. The heavy sensation of sleep flowed through her mind as her eyes closed, and for an instant it was almost too difficult to try and open them again. But she did, and climbed to her feet.
A torch. A beacon. Something to open the way.
Runes were shaped in chains by the weavers to do their will. The chains relied on structure...but also on the weaver's own will.
Serenity had abundant willpower. The meanings are what I need them to be, for the spell to be complete. I just have to connect them—build them, and then guide them—the right way.
"Kenaz," she whispered.
She might have sworn she heard the crackle of flame—D'aej's intimate knowledge of primal magic usually brought along echoes of their deepest natures—and somewhere in the darkness down the stacks, a spark of green light appeared.
"There!" She turned in the direction of the light, bouncing a little on her toes. "It's somewhere down there."
Not tonight, human.
Warm blackness swept over her, and she tumbled to the ground.
***
Later she woke, still feeling the unyielding grip of sleep in her bones. She lay nestled in her sheets, and as she lifted her head from the pillow, she blinked at the morning light coming in from the narrow window overhead.
What the hell?
Then, she swore. "D'aej! What are we doing here?"
I told you we had to sleep. So, I brought the body to the sleeping chambers, and we slept.
"But I had the book!" She thumped a fist on the bed. "You bastard, I had it!"
He gave his customary echoing sigh. No, you didn't. You had a clearer idea of where to look, and kudos to you for thinking of such a clever way to find it. It looks like you might not be as dull as I imagined. But unless we are not the only ones in that section behind the tapestry lately, the book has not been moved, and you still needed to sleep.
She rose from the bed, drowsy and disoriented, and reached for her robes. "Well, now that we've slept, let's go get it."
Does it occur to you that perhaps someone may notice your recent absences from meals? The ungainly redheaded boy has been getting nosy. You're cutting it too damn close, lately.
"It's not a problem," she growled. "We'll have the spell soon, and it won't matter."
A bright burst of pain bit at her skull, though the darkling's former cruelty had greatly lessened after their days of study together. Serenity only winced at what might have been a simple smack upside the head.
Think, Serenity! You're becoming reckless, and you're going to get us caught! It's bad enough you came here among the unenlightened after taking the bond, anyway, let alone stayed so long and infiltrated the most arcane section of their archives!
"Rook managed just fine."
You are not nearly as levelheaded as Rook.
She sneered at herself in the mirror. "I can do this!"
By the living runes, if I'd known you were going to be so stubborn and stupid I'd have killed us both in the Rachalör and been done with it!
"Just stop!" she hissed. "We'll be okay!"
The sense of him broiled and bubbled inside her body.
She took a deep breath and pulled the robes over her head. "Look, if it will shut you up, I'll go to breakfast first this morning. I'll even go for a walk through the town and make sure a good lot of people see me out there before I come back."
It would do well for you to study the chain for walking through the shadows, first. You are less likely to be seen returning.
"They say weavers who shadow-walk are hiding something," she quoted. Jack had taught her that.
But Serenity, D'aej growled, you are.
***
The day and her promised distractions took much, much longer than she hoped. At breakfast, some of the other students greeted her, remarking on her recent absences—D'aej glowed with smug heat in her mind, having been proved right—and her redheaded admirer wanted to compare studies with her, guessing correctly, though not completely, what she'd been doing with her time. After making it through the meal, she begrudgingly forced herself to leave the school and take a walk around her old hometown. She'd hoped to avoid this part: the place was too familiar, and too much of it reminded her of a time before her obsessive quest, a time when Jack still strolled the streets in the evenings, still came to the Den to drink a beer while she pored through the very first of her studies. Memories only growing colder and sharper in her heart over time.
In her mind, the futhark kept dancing, kept twirling around the image of a book, the book, where she'd find the spell she'd been looking for since she'd lost her first and best friend. Rook had warned her the magic she sought, to tear a man's soul from him, might be a punishment disproportionate to the crime, but he hadn't been here. He hadn't seen the hero of Eclipse gunned down...Serenity understood, in the deepest part of her heart, the man who'd stolen Jack Chamberlain deserved no lesser sentence for what he'd done.
Stopping for a moment outside The Wolf's Den, gazing at the spot where she'd held Jack while he bled, she found it almost impossible not to rush straight back to the library and tear the stacks apart. But she took a deep breath, clenching her fist and feeling D'aej's pulse in her head, and she walked on.
