The Spell Realm (13 page)

“That would be amazing,” Liva said, “but I don’t know if I could afford such a treasure—”

“Liva, please . . .” Blaise gave her an exasperated look. “You are offering us your hospitality. This is the least I can do in return.” And before she could protest, he added, “Why don’t you join Gala and me for a lesson tomorrow? As it so happens, I plan to start introducing her to written spells.”

Chapter 16: Augusta

The white mouse ran around its cage as Augusta prepared the latest version of her spell. When it was ready, she fed the cards into the Interpreter Stone and waited. The results were almost instantaneous.

Within seconds, the mouse collapsed, appearing dead.

Reaching into the cage, Augusta pulled out the little animal and studied it closely, feeling its heartbeat. It was not dead after all; the spell had worked as intended. Dania’s books had turned out to be quite helpful.

Sighing, Augusta placed the mouse back in its cage and began to prepare the next spell in her arsenal. That one, if successful, would likely kill the mouse, so Augusta intended to try it on a cockroach instead.

She was also making progress on her physics project, and the results of what she was uncovering were breathtaking—and frightening. She had been thinking about this theory for months, but only since Barson’s ‘death’ had she realized the destructive potential of what she was studying. If she was right, then she could use this previously unimaginable power to destroy the creature if all other measures failed. What she needed was a viable spell to go along with the theory.

After a few minutes, she realized that her attention was drifting again. For the first time in her life, Augusta had difficulty focusing on her work. Ever since she woke up alone in her bed this morning, she’d been gripped by a sense of unreality. It was difficult for her to believe that after everything, Barson had survived—that he was as alive and vital as ever.

Everything she’d done since that awful battle was based on the assumption that he was dead, that the creature had killed him and other members of the Guard. Had Augusta done the right thing in committing the Council to this course of action? At the time, she’d had no doubt, but now she wondered if there had been something else she could’ve done instead. If there was some way she could’ve destroyed the monster without endangering Blaise in the process.

Her gaze turned toward a small droplet lying on her desk. It was the one she had picked up in Blaise’s house during her last visit there—the one that had been lying discarded on the floor. She suspected that this droplet most likely contained a memory of her and Blaise’s time together . . . a memory that her former lover clearly didn’t value anymore.

She hesitated for a moment, then her hand reached for the droplet, almost involuntarily.

Closing her eyes, Augusta placed it under her tongue.

* * *

Blaise sat with Augusta in a large auditorium, watching the show of light unfolding in front of them. It was a spectacle unlike any other, with every color of the rainbow meshing together and separating in large spheres. The spheres looked like gigantic soap bubbles moving in fractal patterns, flowing with the serene music that accompanied the show.

“I always thought sorcery could be beautiful,” Blaise whispered, leaning closer to Augusta, “but this is truly amazing.”

She gazed up at him, her amber eyes reflecting the lights. “You’re right—it’s gorgeous.”

Blaise felt a familiar warmth in his chest, a type of tenderness mixed with overwhelming desire. Even after seven years together, Augusta was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen—not to mention, the most intelligent. Minor philosophical disagreements aside, she was everything he had ever wanted.

It was time, Blaise decided. He had waited for the perfect moment, and it wasn’t ever going to get better than this.

Reaching out, he took her hand, holding it gently. Then he lifted her palm to his lips, kissing each finger in the traditional declaration of intent. Her eyes rounded with wonder, her soft mouth parting in surprise, and he quickly spoke the words: “Augusta, my love, will you be my bride?”

She blinked, staring at him, and then a smile of sheer joy lit her face. “Yes . . . Yes, Blaise, of course.”

He had never been so happy in his life.

* * *

Regaining her senses, Augusta opened her eyes, feeling the burn of tears. She hadn’t known that Blaise had captured the memory of their engagement; he must’ve been recording it without telling her. She recalled that he did have a big bag with him that day, but she hadn’t known he was lugging around the new Sphere his brother gave him.

The ache in her chest was almost unbearable. For a moment, she felt like she had lost Blaise all over again. Seeing herself through his eyes had been devastating. In recent months with Barson, she had managed to convince herself that she was fine, that she had moved on from the wreck of her eight-year relationship, but the truth of the matter was that she would never be able to fully erase Blaise from her memories.

Getting up, she walked over to the window, gazing out at the streets of Turingrad far below. She could feel her cheeks getting wet from the tears running down her face, and she wiped them with the sleeve of her silk dress. More than ever, she wished that she could go back in time and undo everything that had happened in the last two years, but that was not even a theoretical possibility.

She had to live with the consequences of her actions . . . and so did Blaise. She couldn’t let her emotions get in the way of doing the right thing again, no matter how much it hurt.

Blaise’s creature could not be allowed to live, and this memory changed nothing.

Chapter 17: Blaise

At Blaise’s request, Liva took them to a more deserted part of the mountains. It was a safety precaution on his part—he did not want Gala to accidentally destroy half the forest with some spell gone awry. He didn’t explain his rationale, not wanting to hurt Gala’s feelings, and he knew she thought that he simply wanted them to enjoy the scenery—which did turn out to be truly breathtaking.

It took them about an hour to fly there, and Blaise used the time to teach Liva how to operate the chaise. As he’d suspected, she was a quick learner, mastering the new oral spells with ease. By the time they arrived at the location, she was directing and landing the chaise on her own, reveling in the freedom of using sorcery out of sight of her fellow villagers.

Gala sat quietly on the trip, seemingly absorbing the sights. As they got deeper into the mountains, the green of forest and grass was replaced by the yellow and orange of naked stones. The wind also picked up, blowing from the ocean side.

“The storms are more likely to reach here,” Liva explained when Blaise questioned her about the strange-looking rocks. “And even when it’s calm, like today, the winds tend to be pretty fierce, stripping away all life from these rocks over time.”

As they approached what looked like a large gash in the ground, Liva directed them to fly lower. They were going to a canyon, Blaise realized as they descended. Up close, the canyon was massive. The mountains were like walls, rising up all around them. It was desolate and majestic, and all three of them were silent as the chaise touched the ground, awed by the magnificence of nature.

After they explored the area a little, Blaise began his instructions. “I am going to teach you a very basic elemental spell,” he said, looking at the two women. “You will manipulate the power of fire, the way our apprentices usually do.”

Gala and Liva nodded, watching him intently.

“First and foremost, I need to teach you the language for written sorcery. It’s similar to the verbal arcane language—you still have the conditional statements that you both know—but it also contains some powerful extensions and mathematical constructs that don’t exist in the spoken language. This, for example—” he drew a symbol for loop on the card, “—is a repetition construct we call the ‘loop.’ It allows your spell to repeat an action many times without having to write it out more than once.”

“So it lets you say ‘do this one hundred times?’” Gala asked, looking fascinated.

“Yes, but it also lets you say things like ‘Raise the temperature of this water by one degree until it starts boiling,’” Blaise explained, and wrote out the spell version of what he just said. It was much more elegant and precise on the card than it would be if spoken.

For the next couple of hours, he continued going over the basics of the language, explaining how to use formulas and calculations on paper instead of doing complex math in one’s head. They took a short break to eat some of the food Liva had brought, and then Blaise continued the lesson.

“There are two paths to every spell,” he told them. “The hard way is to start from scratch and specify in code exactly what you want to happen. There are infinite ways of doing that, just as there are infinite ways of writing a poem using words. It’s also very time-consuming. An easier way, the way I am teaching you today, is to use something someone had already written in the past and modify it for your own purposes.”

Liva frowned. “So does that mean a commoner could learn to do some spells by just copying the symbols without understanding them?”

“Yes,” Blaise said, trying to hide the bitterness in his voice. “That had been my hope originally—that the Interpreter Stone would allow people to do this. But unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way. Theoretically, one could indeed do a spell by just copying something already in existence, but it still requires access to an Interpreter Stone—and the Council doesn’t let that happen.”

“And I would think many spells require at least some basic understanding of the language,” Gala said, looking at Blaise, “to change the variables and so on.”

“Yes, indeed,” Blaise confirmed, and moved on to the demonstration of the spell itself. Just thinking about the way sorcerers tried to keep this knowledge to themselves made him furious.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he pulled out a blank card and started writing, explaining every word and symbol along the way. Here, at least, he could make a difference by teaching sorcery to someone who needed it.

The spell he chose to demonstrate was a simple one. It would just burn some of the dried bushes near them. When he was done, he slid the finished card into the stone.

As expected, the bush to his right flared up, burning quickly in the dry air of the canyon.

It was Liva’s turn next.

Blaise watched as she carefully wrote out her spell, changing the variables to target a different bush. At first, it looked like she wasn’t going to provide enough kinetic energy for the bush to ignite, but then she caught her omission and fixed it before feeding the cards into the stone.

Within seconds, the targeted bush caught on fire as well, causing the older woman to squeal in excitement. Gala clapped, and Blaise grinned at them, pleased with his students’ progress.

“Now let me try,” Gala said, clearly eager to get started, and Blaise handed her the writing implements. To his surprise, the code that she began writing was different from what he had taught them. Apparently she had decided to improvise. While she was busy, Blaise surreptitiously wrote out a protection spell for Liva and himself, just in case anything went wrong.

When Gala was finished with her code, Blaise looked over her cards. He was pretty sure he knew what would happen when the spell was cast, but he was still glad for the protection around them. “Go ahead,” he told Gala, and watched as she fed the cards into the Stone.

The targeted plant started to smolder, slowly and gracefully, one branch at a time. The pattern of this fire was unusually complex. Somehow Gala had managed to raise the temperature of the bush in parts, focusing on branches of specific length and dryness. And then, in what seemed like a coordinated way, the entire plant burst into flames.

“Beautiful,” Liva said, looking deeply impressed.

“Amazing,” Blaise agreed, echoing her sentiment.

“Thank you.” Gala’s cheeks glowed at their praise.

They kept discussing written spells until Liva confessed that she was tired. Gala and Blaise were not ready to quit yet, but Blaise graciously told Liva that they were done with lessons for the day. Gala looked slightly upset, and Blaise guessed that she wanted to stay in this starkly beautiful area for a while longer. “Why don’t you take the chaise?” he suggested to Liva. “Gala and I will remain here for a bit, look around. You can land it in the forest right next to the village, so the others won’t see you.”

Liva frowned. “But how will you get back?”

“I’ll summon the chaise when you’re done with it,” he told her, and spent the next couple of minutes convincing her to use this opportunity to practice her verbal spells. Liva finally gave in, climbing onto the chaise, and Blaise and Gala were left alone.

“I have a special spell I wrote for you,” he told Gala when the chaise disappeared into the distance. “It’s a gift.”

“A gift? Why?” Gala’s face brightened with excitement.