EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (123 page)

The sound was so powerful, she could practically feel the walls of the house vibrating. There was no way Blaise could ignore this. In fact, if he was anywhere in the house, he would likely be half-deaf from that spell—and quite furious. It was probably not the best way to start their conversation, but it was the only way she could think of to get his attention. She would much rather deal with furious Blaise than the addict she was beginning to be afraid she would find.
 

The fact that he didn’t respond to the noise spoke volumes. Only someone absorbed in a Life Capture would have been immune to the spell she’d just cast. The alternative—that he’d finally left his house after months of being a hermit—was an unlikely possibility, though Augusta couldn’t help but cling to that small hope.

The scary thing about Life Captures was that people addicted to them sometimes died. They would get so absorbed in living the lives of others, they would neglect their health, forgetting to eat, sleep, and even drink. Although sorcerers could sustain their bodies with magic, they had to do spells in order to keep up their energy levels. A sorcerer Life Capture addict would be nearly as vulnerable as a regular person if he or she forgot to do the appropriate spell.
 

Standing there in front of the door, Augusta realized that she had a decision to make. She could either report this lack of response to Ganir or she could risk going in.
 

If this had been a commoner’s house, it would’ve been easy. However, most sorcerers had magical defenses in place against unauthorized entry. In the Tower, they frequently did spells to prevent their locks from being tampered with. From what she could recall, however, Blaise rarely bothered to do that. Trying to unlock his door using sorcery was likely her best bet.
 

A quick spell later, she was entering the hallway, seeing the familiar furnishings and paintings on the walls.

Looking for either Blaise himself or the evidence of his addiction, Augusta slowly walked through the empty house, her heart aching at the flood of memories. How could this have happened to them? She should’ve fought harder for Blaise; she should’ve tried to explain, to make him understand. Perhaps she should’ve even swallowed her pride and groveled—an idea that had seemed unthinkable at the time.
 

Starting with the downstairs, Augusta went into the storage area, where she remembered him keeping important magical supplies. Opening the cabinets, she found several jars with Life Capture droplets, but there was nothing extraordinary about that. Most sorcerers—even Augusta herself, to some degree—used the Life Captures to record important events in their lives or their work.
 

One cupboard drew her attention. In there, she saw more jars that didn’t seem to be sorcery-related. Blaise always labeled everything, so she came closer, trying to see what was written on them.
 

To her surprise, she saw that all the jars had one word on them: Louie. These were likely Blaise’s memories of his brother, she realized. The fact that he still had them—that he hadn’t consumed them as a hardened addict would—gave her some small measure of hope. One of those jars looked particularly intriguing; it had a skull-and-bone symbol on it, as healers would sometimes put on deadly poisons. She had no idea what it could be.

In the corner of the room, she saw some broken jars on the floor. Amidst pieces of glass, there were more droplets, lying there as though they were trash. Curious, Augusta approached the corner.

To her shock, on a few of the jars, she saw labels with her name on them. Blaise’s memories of her . . . He must’ve thrown them away in a fit of rage. Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to keep the tears that were burning her eyes from escaping. She hadn’t expected this visit to be so painful, the memories to be so fresh.
 

Reaching down, she pocketed one of the droplets, doing her best to avoid cutting her hand on the shards of glass lying all around it. Then, trying to regain her equilibrium, she exited the room and headed upstairs.

All around her, she could see dust-covered windowsills and musty-looking furnishings. Whatever Blaise’s mental state, he clearly wasn’t taking care of his house. Not a good sign, as far as she was concerned.

Going from room to room, she determined that Blaise wasn’t there after all. Relieved, Augusta realized that he must’ve left the house after all. That
was
a good sign, as addicts rarely came out unnecessarily. Unless they ran out of Life Captures—which Blaise hadn’t, judging by the jars downstairs. Could it be that Ganir was wrong again? After all, his spies had apparently misinformed him about the size of the peasant army Barson’s men would be facing. Why not this also? But if they weren’t wrong, then what did Blaise want with all those Life Captures he’d been getting?

Consumed with curiosity, she entered Blaise’s study again, the familiar surroundings making her chest tighten. They’d spent so much time here together, exploring new spells and coming up with new coding methodologies. This was where they’d invented the Interpreter Stone and the simplified arcane language to go with it—a discovery that had transformed the entire field of sorcery.

Perhaps she should leave now. It was obvious that Blaise wasn’t home, and Augusta no longer felt comfortable invading his privacy in this way.
 

Turning, she started walking out of the room when an open set of scrolls caught her attention. They were ancient and intricate, reminding her of the type of writings she’d seen in the library of Dania, another Council member. As though her feet had a mind of their own, Augusta found herself approaching the scrolls and picking them up.

To her shock, she saw that they had been written by Lenard the Great himself—except she’d never seen these notes before. She and Blaise had studied everything the great sorcerer had done; without the base of knowledge laid by Lenard and his students, they would’ve never been able to create the Interpreter Stone and the accompanying magical language. She should’ve come across these scrolls before, and the fact that she was seeing them now for the first time was incredible.

Skimming them in disbelief, Augusta comprehended the extent of the wealth of knowledge Blaise had been concealing from the world. These old scrolls contained the theories on which Lenard the Great had based his oral spells—the theories that provided a glimpse into the nature of the Spell Realm itself.
 

Why had Blaise not told anyone about them? Now even more curious, she reached for another set of notes lying on the desk.
 

It was a journal, she saw immediately—Blaise’s recording of his work.

Fascinated, Augusta riffled through the papers and began reading.

And as she read, she felt the fine hair on the back of her neck rising. What was contained in these notes was so horrifying she could hardly believe her eyes.

Putting down the journal, she cast a frantic glance around the study, wanting to convince herself that this couldn’t possibly be real—that it was all the ramblings of a madman. Her gaze fell upon the Life Capture Sphere, and she saw a single droplet glittering inside.
 

Reaching for it with a trembling hand, she put it in her mouth, letting the experience consume her.

Sitting there in his study, Blaise couldn’t stop thinking about Gala—about his wondrous, beautiful creation. Closing his eyes, he pictured her in his mind—the perfect features of her face, the deep intelligence gleaming in her mysterious blue eyes. He wondered what she would become. Right now, she was like a child, new to everything, but he could already see the potential for her intellect and abilities to surpass anything the world had ever seen.

His attraction to her was as startling as it was worrisome. She was his creation. How could he feel this way about her? Even with Augusta, he hadn’t experienced this kind of immediate connection.

Trying to suppress those thoughts, he turned his attention to the fascinating matter of her origin. The way she’d described the Spell Realm was intriguing; he would’ve given anything to witness its wonders himself.
 

Perhaps there was a way. After all, Gala’s mind was quite human-like, and she had survived there . . .

Gasping, Augusta regained her sense of self. Breathing heavily, she stared around the study, reeling from what she’d just seen. What had Blaise done? What kind of monstrosity had he created?

This was a disaster of epic proportions. If Augusta understood correctly, Blaise had made an inhuman intelligence. An unnatural mind that nobody—not even Blaise himself—could comprehend. What would this creature want? What would it be capable of?
 

Unbidden, an old myth about a sorcerer who had tried to create life entered Augusta’s mind, making her stomach roil. It was the kind of tale that peasants and children believed, and logically, Augusta knew there was no truth to it. But she still couldn’t help thinking about it, remembering the first time she’d read the horror story as a child—and how frightened she had been then, waking up screaming from nightmares of a ghoulish creature that killed its creator and his entire village. Later on, Augusta had learned the truth—that the sorcerer in question had actually been experimenting with cross-breeding various animal species and that one of his creations (a wolf-bear hybrid) had escaped and wreaked havoc on the neighboring town. Still, by then it was too late. The story had left an indelible impression on Augusta’s young mind, and even as an adult, the idea of unnatural life terrified her.

Blaise’s creation, however, was not a myth. She—
it
—was an artificially created monster with potentially unlimited powers. For all they knew, it could destroy the world and every human being in it.

And Blaise was attracted to it. The thought made Augusta so sick she thought she might throw up.

No. She couldn’t allow this to happen. She had to do something. Grabbing Lenard’s scrolls, Augusta tucked them in her bag. Then, consumed by rage and fear, she channeled her emotions into a cleansing fire spell—and let it loose in the room.

Chapter XXII

Blaise

F
LYING
BACK
HOME
, B
LAISE
TRIED
to convince himself that he’d done the right thing—that Gala needed to see the world on her own, to experience everything she wanted. The fact that he already missed her was not a good reason to limit her freedom.

His trip back was much faster than his flight to the village. He’d purposefully gone slower before, giving Gala a chance to see Turingrad, but now there was no reason to linger. He knew this town like the back of his hand, and there were far too many unpleasant memories associated with this view—especially that of the gloomy silhouette of the Tower.
 

Passing by the Town Square, he remembered how Esther would yell at him for swimming in the fountain as a child. As a boy, he had enjoyed diving for the coins, and she had always scolded him, saying that it was inappropriate for a sorcerer’s son to be swimming in the dirty fountain water.
 

Thinking of Esther and watching the people below, he reflected on what he had tried to do for them. He had wanted to give them the power to do magic, to improve their lives. And instead, he’d ended up creating something miraculous—a beautiful, intelligent woman who was as far removed from an inanimate object as anything he could imagine. He might have failed in his original task, but he couldn’t regret having Gala here. Knowing her had already brightened his life immeasurably. For the first time since Louie’s death, Blaise felt some measure of excitement—happiness, even.

Being without her for the next few days would be a challenge. He needed to find something to do to occupy his mind, Blaise decided.
 

One thing that occurred to him was the challenge of figuring out why Gala couldn’t do magic. By all rights, as an intelligence born in the Spell Realm, she should have the ability to do magic directly, without relying on all the spells and conventions that sorcerers used. It should be as natural to her as breathing—and yet it didn’t seem to be, for now at least.