Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (42 page)

I saw the Immortal as it and Shelly Johnson began a slow retreat. I squared my shoulders and drew on my final reserves to say,
“Sisto cor!
”

I felt the magic tingle in every nerve but even as it left me, I realized that something was wrong. Not too far away there was a witness. They couldn't have possibly heard what I said or known what it did, but Death had warned me not to do the spell in sight of others. I'd assumed the rules were to prevent questions. That was faulty thinking. It was one of the requirements in order to make the spell work at all.

As my vision tunneled down to a narrow pinpoint, I dove for the amber gem. It couldn't have been more than a matter of seconds before I had recovered the amber in my hand. The Immortal, Shelly Jonson, and the carpet they'd hired were gone, and the fight was now over even as the Market started its lockdown.

The deck rattled under the weight of a dragon, then Mordon was soon kneeling beside me. A big part of his cheek gaped open. He held the cuff of his sleeve against it to absorb the blood and make speaking easier. I deliberately did not look too closely.

“The others?” I asked.

“Leif and Barnes stayed here to calm things down. Lilly and the rest are safe,” Mordon said and stroked the hair off my brow. “I wish I could say the same for you. You need to stop doing this to yourself.”

“Says the man with teeth showing through his cheek,” I said and looked away from the injury. It made me sick just to see.

“Troll club.”

“What now?”

“Selestiani.” Mordon wadded up his shirt and pressed it against his freely bleeding cheek. “I don't want to answer questions at Kragdomen.”

I turned the amber over in my palm. “There's another Unwritten. And I think this one is active.”

“Why?”

“Because now the soul gem is cold to the touch.”

Mordon folded my hand around it. “Just hold on. The rest doesn't matter.”

But it did, because it meant I'd failed. There was another Unwritten unleashed into the world, and I would have to wait to understand what effect it had.

And that was that. It had started and stopped so fast that I was still reeling from it while I endured a round of healing spells. My own bout of spells was nothing as prolonged nor sophisticated as what they did for Julius, Mordon, and Valerin. Barnes had escaped without noticeable injury, which he later said was because he knew where everything was in the market, lights on or off. Later he developed massive bruises around his face, and he admitted that he'd gotten into a fight with someone from his past but I wasn't able to get the full story on that by the slightest means.

After this, the visitors stopped coming to my room, so I went out in search of Valerin.

I found the room he was in by checking the chart at the nurse's watering hole. Room 23. The first room 23 not the second, which meant it should have been Room 22 except it seemed that even Selestiani had paranoia about certain double-numbers. Tacitus and the nurses would have a fit if they knew I wasn't resting, but so what? Similar to Kragdomen, the doors here didn't have a latch for safety reasons, in case a child was stuck in a non-human form. The man inside slept on a mattress missing its blankets, the covers themselves crumpled up at the foot of the bed where he'd kicked them off.

Instinctively, I stripped the blankets, shook them out, and folded them. When they were at last settled in a square on the visitor's chair, I noticed the sleeper was rolling to face me. He squeezed his eyes and fell back to sleep. I let out a shaking breath.

What was I going to tell him?

“Feraline, I want you to know how much we enjoy having your here,” Julius had said yesterday as soon as we'd all returned and I was reunited with Anna.

“It sounds like you're telling me farewell,” I said, a little injured at the thought of being taken away from the baby who wasn't smiling, but wasn't scowling either.

Julius pressed his fingers into Anna's palm so her fingers tightened about his, staring down at her in admiration. He said, “I know what it is to be in love with two people and be torn between them. I would understand your reason for staying or going. But if you stay, this is my charge to care for and you will always be her guardian. No matter what.”

“I know,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I've always known. Should we find you.”

“Feraline, there is one last thing.” Julius exposed the honeysuckle pin and showed it to me. “Who did you buy this from?”

“It was a gift from Lyall Limber of the Verdant Wildwoods. He didn't say what it would do, and I'm not sure myself.”

“A simple yet powerful protection charm. Old magic, called Roman Lullaby. It pushes danger off to the side, instead of meeting it square on force for force. My question is, why did she receive this as a gift?”

“Lyall said if Mordon were to not be adequate as a secondary carer, the Wildwoods would step in through Lyall.”

Julius turned the pin over in his hand. “Interesting times we live in, for the Wildwoods to extend her sanctuary to one of our own.”

“You think Lyall knew she was phoenix? Then why didn't he tell me?”

“The Wildwoods knew. Lyall may not have. If he did know and decided not to tell, I have no doubt that he would find the omission to have amusing consequences.” Julius had put the pin back on her dress. “I will keep it with her at all times, if only to honor their kindness.”

Now I watched as Valerin's eyes flitted open and he stretched. His skin sported a lot of discoloration and he favored his left side as he sat upright, but otherwise he didn't look too terrible.

“What's that, twenty stitches on your forearm?” I asked.

He brought it around to his face. “Eighteen.” Then he grinned at me. “Bet the fire drake has double that in his cheek alone. Stick with me and you'll still have a man left in ten years.”

I smiled back.

Valerin shifted on the bed, waiting for a response. I licked my lips, wondering if I should agree or laugh or something.

“How many stitches does he have?” Valerin asked, his voice just a little tense.

I looked at my hands. “I don't know. I haven't seen him yet.”

“Ah.” He slumped back onto his pillows.

“What?”

“You saw me first. You're not going to stay, are you?”

I studied him carefully, gauging his reaction for hints of violence or distress. His eyes were closed, his throat tense, but the lines about his face were smooth and his hands rested relaxed by his side.

“I am not staying,” I said and ran my thumb nail distractedly down my other nails. “It is nice here, and special, everything about it. But it isn't home.”

I slipped Valerin's brood ring off my finger and pressed it into his palm where it stayed, still and lifeless.

“It's been slowly working loose,” I added.

Valerin held it up to the light, examining it. “Julius once told me that these rings do more than seek out mates. They're safeguards for the family. At times, there are stories of the rings calling to mated people only to release them once they've worked a great deed. Maybe this was why it chose you.”

For whatever reason, my eyes were a little misty. I swiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Fera, there's one thing you should know. If the ring called to you for protection, it means this will not be the last time you are here. You'll be connected to it. Julius thinks you're a gatekeeper.”

At my confused stare, he clarified. “A gatekeeper is someone who acts as a middleman between difference places and people. Any place you have been recently is important. And it means there is change in the world. Gatekeepers appeared before the Black Death, the Romans, the Industrial Revolution, the East India Trading Company, all the major floods and wars and crisises.”

“A sort of harbinger of death then?” I bit my lip, dreading his response. I hadn't told him about my entire 'I died and Death brought me back as his agent' gig, frankly it was a pretty crazy story that I preferred to avoid. So how could he guess?

“No, not like that. A little like that, but a gatekeeper is the counterbalance, a way to equalize the bad that's coming.”

“So, a hero then.”

“I wasn't going to use the term, but, yes.” He sighed. “You don't believe me.”

“I've had a version of this talk before, with my father. He used the term hero. The gatekeeper and people and places thing is new, and it clarifies a little bit on what started out as very vague instructions. One thing I've never heard is why me?”

“According to Julius, it's not random, it's not one of the Fates looking at you with her eye. You brought it about. You chose to fill the role, even if you didn't know you were doing it. You are as you do, and you do as you think.” Valerin considered. “Is it true what you said about Cole? The cannibal bit?”

“Wendigo, and yes, it's true. And I'm here now because Cole brought a monster into being which should never have existed.”

Valerin exhaled sharply. “The Lost Magic.”

“Lost Magic?”

“Spells stolen from the gods and misused. They created and destroyed and sent the world into chaos. The giants, if you will, of ancient Greece. Creatures were formed and mankind set themselves apart from everything else. There was more magic in the world before the veil fell, everything in general was more powerful than what we now know, but the old stories tell of five particularly influential spells.”

My brow furrowed and I leaned in closer. “What do they do?”

“Well,” Valerin sat a little nearer. “No one knows, but one is said to create life and another is said to kill Death himself.” He flourished his hand dramatically.

“But that's not possible,” I said as fast as a reflex. “Death isn't alive. He can't be killed. It's like killing a rock.”

Valerin laughed, then winced with pain. “And how would you know that?”

“I don't. I mean, how can I?”

But even so, I knew it was true. “Death can't be killed unless,” I paused, wondering if it might be possible, “unless he's first brought to life.”

“Could be a mistranslation or simply a flamboyant storyteller.”

I nodded.

The door swung open behind me, creaking like the double half-doors at some Western-movie set saloon, revealing a perturbed nurse frowning at me. The Western-feel stopped at her clothes. She wore flat wooden clogs to protect her feet, one bright white apron over a dark blue one, and a simple long-sleeved brown uniform beneath everything. Her hair was tied at the nape of her neck.

She said, “
You need your rest, milady. You got yourself a blow to the head and if you don't go lay yourself down, I'll give you another lump to match the first.”

“I'm going,” I said. “But I was getting Valerin water, he asked for—”

“I will do the honors. You go back to your room,” the nurse said.

Valerin was definitely confused about the water request which he had never made. Like I hoped, once we were out in the hall, the nurse went in search of water for him, leaving me free to enter Mordon's room right behind her back.

“Hey, Love,” I said before even checking that he was in the room.

He was, and he resembled Frankenstein's monster with all those phoenix feather stitches and reddened swollen flesh. My stomach churned in discomfort and I felt white hot bolts of pain in instant sympathy.

“How many did they give you?”

He knew or figured out that I meant stitches. “Eleven here, six there, another dozen over there. In total, nearly fifty, and,” he lowered his voice to a slow bedroom tone, “now I have black eyeliner. Is it fetching?”

I couldn't help but laugh at his black eyes. “You do happen to resemble less a pirate and more a raccoon.”

“A raccoon?”

“Or bank robber. They wear that mask, too. But I think this is less permanent than a raccoon's marking.”