The Child Prince (The Artifactor) (10 page)

Bel struggled to get up into the barstool. With a roll of the eyes, she grabbed the back of his pants and hauled him upwards. With a gasp, he flailed a little and finally caught hold of his balance. Wiggling about, he righted himself enough to turn and give her a glare. “I could have gotten up unassisted.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

 Pierpoint cleared his throat significantly, breaking up a fight before it could start. He put a large, leather-bound book in front of Sevana and flipped it open to the front few pages. “Here are my initial evaluations of the curse. Well, it’s really just a spell. Does it match with his current condition?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Bel asked in confusion, leaning forward to peer at the book himself.

Pierpoint, being a patient sort, answered. “Magic isn’t a stagnant thing like most people believe. It has its own properties, its own…life, if you will. If you cast a spell or create a magical device and leave it alone for a long period of time, it will develop its own quirks.”

“I’m not sure if I truly understood that,” Bel admitted slowly.

“Allow me to offer an example,” Pierpoint suggested genially. “If you hung a hammer on the wall and ignored it for a year, what would happen to it?”

“I imagine it’d gather quite a bit of dust but nothing else.”

“Then what if you stored a bucket of water in the same area and ignored it for a year?”

Bellomi made a face. “I imagine it would become very stagnant. I saw that happen once with the palace fountains. The water turned black and stank.”

“Exactly so. Magic doesn’t necessarily deteriorate, you understand, but it
does
change as time goes on.”

“Hmmm, I didn’t know that.” Bel sounded interested, but anything new caught his interest. He leaned further on his barstool, making it rock a little, as he tried to read sideways. “So how did it change?”

“It weakened, actually.” While they talked, she’d pulled out her own notes from her satchel and put them on the table for a side-to-side comparison. Sevana pointed to the numbers that were written down. “The strength of the spell is now about half of that. It’s also warped slightly, relying more heavily upon its base component.” She traced the line of numbers with a thoughtful finger. “If we left you alone, the spell would wear itself out in another ten years or so.”

A flash of panic crossed Bel’s face. “Err…but you’re not going to do that, right?”

The opportunity proved to be too much. She gave him a sly smirk. “It would certainly save me some work, wouldn’t it?”

Bel really panicked at that. “Well, but, it means that I would still look like an eight year old in ten years, right? I’d still need another ten years to actually grow again and look like an adult. And I still wouldn’t have the skills I need to be king. So it’s not really feasible to just leave the curse alone.”

“Hooo.” She clapped her hands together in approval. “So you do have some negotiation skills.”

Realization sank in and he slammed his hands against the table with a loud
bang
. “SEVANA! This is serious!”

She tsked him, wagging a finger in a chiding manner. “It’s only serious when I can’t fix it.”

“Now, now,” Pierpoint patted him on the head as if he truly were a child. “Stop teasing, Sevana. He’s been under the pressure of this curse for a long time.”

“You’re too soft,” she dismissed while turning back to the book. “Hmmm. So it was wind-based, eh? I thought as much.”

“Wait, I never could prove that,” Pierpoint objected. He reached around her shoulder to flip to a different page. “Here, see? I went through several different tests but couldn’t be completely sure.”

She read through the pages quickly, nodding here and there as she caught a particularly well done test. “I see. You really did go through a great many possibilities. But
I’m
confirming it. I did different tests and reached the same conclusion.”

Pierpoint let out a long sigh. “So I actually could have broken the curse earlier. If I had been able to devise something stronger than the wind-base, that is.”

“Perhaps. But I think you would have needed an Artifactor to create something to do the job.” She closed the massive book with a
whump
. “Regardless, I have the information I need. I can get to work now.”

“Wait, wait, you’re talking in riddles,” Bel complained, hands held up in a pleading gesture. “What does all of this mean?”

“The curse is breakable,” Sevana said.

Bellomi felt his mouth go dry. He swallowed twice and wet his lips before forcing any words out. “You can break it?”

She put a hand on her hip and gave him the cockiest, most arrogant smile he had ever seen on a woman’s face. “I can.”

“B-but—” his eyes darted to Pierpoint, mind whirling in confusion. If one of the most powerful magicians in the known world couldn’t do it, how could she? Sevana kept telling him she didn’t have power, but talent. And he was under a very powerful curse…right…?

Pierpoint took pity on his obvious confusion. “I’ll explain, Your Highness.”

Bellomi gripped his knees with both hands, eyes glued to Pierpoint’s face. “Pray do, sir.”

“There are three basic rules of magic,” Pierpoint started, ticking off points on his fingers. “The first, most basic rule, is that every element of the world has a certain degree of power to it. There is, in fact, a hierarchy of the power that these elements hold. Do you see?”

He did. And at the same time, he didn’t. “Give me an example, please.”

“Fire and water,” Sevana inserted from the side. Her eyes weren’t on either of them—she was in fact scribbling in her notebook—and she kept writing even as she explained. “What happens when you splash water on fire?”

“It’s put out,” he responded instantly but his mind didn’t really register what he said. Why would it be put out…? “Because water has more natural power than fire?”

“Correct,” Pierpoint smiled. “Fire, in fact, has the weakest power of the elements because it is highly unstable. From strongest to weakest, it goes like this: wind, water, earth, fire and wood.”

Bellomi blinked, not sure what to make of that order. “I would think earth would be the strongest?”

“Most would. But wind and water can wear down a rock, given enough time and exposure. I grant you, the power levels are very close to each other. The only true gap in power is between earth, wood and fire.”

“It gets further complicated after that,” Sevana put in helpfully. “Because if those elemental forces are used by mythical beings, or is tampered with by magicians, then their properties and power levels change.”

How very, very interesting. “How does this first rule play in?”

“All spells have some element as its base. Now, in order for us to truly understand how a spell or curse is formed, we have to know what elements were used to create it. If we can break its base, you see, we can break the spell. Your curse was particularly tricky. Whoever devised it went out of their way to make sure that the base element was well camouflaged.” Pierpoint grimaced in frustration. “I never was quite sure which one was used, which is why I didn’t dare attempt anything on you. A mistake would have killed you.”

Unnerved, Bellomi managed a smile. “I thank you for your forbearance.”

Pierpoint actually chuckled. “But Sevana’s diagnostic tools are better than mine. She
did
discover which element was at the base and because of that we know what we can do to break the curse.”

“Or at least, in theory we know,” Sevana muttered.

“Yes, well…” Pierpoint looked away for a moment and sighed. “The trouble, Your Highness, is that the base of your curse is wind.”

Wind. “The strongest element?”

“Precisely.”

Bellomi’s eyes closed in a brief moment of despair.
Wait, don’t give up yet. Sevana said she could break this.
“So how do you break the strongest element?”

“With earth and water and a lot of patience,” Sevana answered. She finally stopped writing in her small book and faced the two men directly. “Maybe the help of a mystical being or two as well. Earth is close enough in power to wear away some at wind. How we’ll do it, I don’t know yet. We’ll likely have to try several things before we hit upon the right thing. Or the right combination of things.”

Alright, so he still couldn’t expect an immediate fix, but she was confident that she could break it. That smile of hers hadn’t faded. Or maybe she smiled because she had a new challenge?

Pierpoint continued, “There’s other factors in your favor as well. Casted spells are the strongest because they are directly connected to the caster’s magic. Your curse is such a case. But there’s also a flaw to this. Unless the castor continually feeds magic into the spell, it’s strength will fade over time. All spells do this, really. Spells do not age well and they lose their potency.”

He followed this closely. “So because my curse is ten years old it’s lost some of its power.”

“Correct. Which makes it, in turn, easier to break.”

“It’s not impotent, you realize. In fact, if we were to release the stasis spell that Pierpoint put you under, you’d start shrinking again immediately. It would just do it at a slower rate.” Sevana shrugged. “The first thing I have to figure out, really, is how to get around his stasis spell so that I can attack the curse directly. Speaking of which, Pierpoint, what’s the base element of that spell? Wind?”

“Yes,” he said almost apologetically.

She gave him quite the look for that. “Since you didn’t know the base element for the curse, I suppose I can’t blame you for using a spell with a similar element.” Even though she said that, her expression clearly said she blamed him anyway.

Pierpoint grimaced. “My apologies. I know it’s going to make it more difficult.”

Sevana rolled her eyes. “Difficult, he says.”

Bellomi’s attention bounced between the two of them, trying to follow this. He thought he had enough of a grasp to figure out the problem. Because the two spells on him had the same base, if Sevana tried to do anything to the curse’s element, it would also affect the stasis’s element? That would definitely be problematic. After all, she might try something on the curse which wouldn’t work but would on the stasis. He might lose even more years as she experimented with different techniques.

The very idea made him shudder.

“Umm…” he hesitated as both magicians looked at him. “What if you remove the stasis spell I’m under and cast a new one with a different element’s base?”

They blinked at him in unison, surprised by the suggestion, then turned to look at each other.

“It’s a valid suggestion,” Pierpoint offered. “I can remove my casting and re-cast within moments. The curse is old enough that it would only take a few days of age from him.”

“It would make my life easier,” she admitted thoughtfully. “We’ll have to come here again, of course, when the curse is broken to have you remove the stasis spell.”

“Of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Which element would you prefer to use as a base?”

Sevana perked up. “You can use elements aside from wind and water in a stasis spell?”

“My dear child, who do you think I am?” Pierpoint drew himself in a haughty manner, eyes sparkling with laughter. “I’m not famous just for my good looks and charming personality, you know.”

“I would hope not,” Sevana retorted with a snort. “Otherwise I’d think the whole kingdom had gone blind. Alright, do you think you can do it with fire?”

“Hmmm…it would take a considerable amount to overpower the wind element in the curse, but…I happen to have fire from the eternal flame handy, which should do the job.” Pierpoint turned to his worktable and shuffled a few things around until he found a blank piece of paper and a dull pencil. Pulling it toward him, he started writing out mathematic equations at high speeds.

Sevana stepped closer and leaned over his shoulder, pointing here and there and making suggestions.

Bellomi tried to pay attention to what they said, but mathematics had never been his best subject and they were speaking in terms so advanced that most of it went straight over his head. He got the idea that what Sevana had suggested was possible, but tricky, and would require more effort on Pierpoint’s part.

“Is my math right on that?”

“It’s right,” Sevana assured him.

“Alright then.” He turned to look at her, expression serious. “You know what the easiest method will be, don’t you?”

“Yes, but it’ll be tricky.” She shrugged as if this didn’t really concern her. “Even if I can trace it, it’ll be tricky. But if that option doesn’t work, I can still break it. It’ll just take more time.”

“Yes, that’s likely true. Then I’ll leave that part up to you.” Pierpoint stood and waved them both out. “Let’s not do this in here. The last time I used a fire-based spell in here, I almost set a few things ablaze that I didn’t want to. No use taking chances.”

Bellomi hopped off his stool and followed them out a different door than the one they’d entered by. It opened into a walled off garden, not spacious by any means, but very well-tended. He looked around curiously as he stepped outside, absently shutting the door behind him. It didn’t look like a decorative garden. In fact, it rather resembled the one that Sevana kept. He recognized several of the same plants. Herbs?