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Alyx halted but she didn’t turn back to face him. She folded her arms across her chest and waited.

  “Turn around.”

  Begrudgingly, she did.

  “Elder Michael has instructed you to visit with Elder Mayrekk.”

  Elder Mayrekk? “Why?”

  “Because Elder Michael said so.”

  “Yes, but why does he want me to see Elder Mayrekk?”

  Symon’s eyes narrowed. “Just follow your orders.”

  “You didn’t even ask why, did you?”

  “Alyx, you never question an Elder.”

  “No, you never−”

  Symon gave her a hard look. He only ever looked at her like that when she was this close to pissing him off enough to condemn her to a week of doghouse duties, like scraping blood off all of her flock mate’s boots or scrubbing out bits of dried demon guts from the creases of their weapons.

  She did not like doghouse duties.

  Alyx bit back her protest. And Symon dismissed her.

  Never question an Elder. Why did it seem that this was so much easier for everyone else to do than her?

  Chapter 7

  Unlike the other Elders, Elder Mayrekk did not participate in normal city life. He didn’t attend meal times or ceremonies, didn’t perform any normal Elder duties. The only Seraphim who normally made contact with Mayrekk were the Castus who brought him their blood donations. Mayrekk was the only living GiftKeeper. Their only source of bloodink, pure magic.

  No one really knew why Mayrekk lived the way he did, and the Elders were not forthcoming with their explanations. Alyx had heard that the Elders had been banned from speaking of Mayrekk to anyone, even among themselves. This only fueled the whispers.

  Mayrekk lived alone on the outskirts of Michaelea, past the training fields and along the skirts of the mountain just before the entrance to the Hollows. His home was a squat mud-brick dome jammed into the foot of a sheer cliff face.

  As Alyx floated to his door she thought, strange that he decided to live close to the Earth rather than the sky. She knocked and waited.

  There was no answer.

  Oh well, guess he’s not home. Alyx was about to turn away when the door jerked away from its frame. Mayrekk’s face appeared, browned and pink from the sun. His eyes, wide and unfocused, were glancing about her. His long wiry hair was uncombed and spilled from a length of twine. His gaze finally settled on her and he stared at her for the longest moment.

  “I’m Alyx.”

  Mayrekk made no show of recognition.

  Alyx continued, “Of the recent ‘did she or didn’t she acquire a gift’ fame.”

  Still nothing.

  She sighed. “Elder Michael sent for me.”

  Mayrekk grunted. He turned and disappeared back into the hut, leaving the door open behind him. Her invitation to come in, she guessed.

  Inside, the smell hit her first. Spicy and sweet and pungent, all at the same time. Then her eyes adjusted to the dim. The dome was larger than it appeared from the outside. Extra space had been carved out of the side of the mountain. It was like being inside a cavern. Mismatched shelves were stacked in no apparent order, all juts and awkward angles. Shelves were crammed with an assortment of vials and bottles and jars. Contained in them were colored liquids, chalky pastel powders, flowers and herbs dried and crinkled in their glass prisons, animal teeth, and what looked like tiny bones. A pale blue light emitted from a rounded black pot sitting on a bench near the center of the room, the small flame underneath it lit seemingly from nothing. Amidst it all she could hear something hissing and an erratic dripping.

  At the back of the room next to a large blank rock wall was a long table covered in various objects, twisted pieces of metal, glass beakers and odd-shaped mechanical instruments with cogs and levers and buttons. Alyx stared at the empty wall. There was something strange about the back of this room...

  “The dimensions of your hut don’t make sense.” She walked up to the wall and ran her hand across it. The uneven rock was surprisingly cool to the touch. “What’s behind here?”

  Mayrekk didn’t answer.

  “Is there a room behind this wall?” She looked for a door but saw none. “There’s a secret room behind this wall, isn’t there?”

  “You’re observant.” Hallelujah, the man had a voice. It was low and grounded, but his words were stilted and jerky as if he didn’t get much practice speaking and was forgetting how to.

  “What do you keep in there?”

  “None of yer business.”

  The bodies of nosy warriors, Alyx thought grimly.

  He pointed to the lone chair positioned in front of the table. “Sit.”

  She did so.

  Mayrekk picked up one of the empty tubes from a wire basket on the table. His sleeve slipped and she saw what looked like a flash of silver around his wrist. He caught her staring and he shook his forearm so his sleeve fell over it again.

  Mayrekk chose one of the needles from an open wooden box, then screwed the needle to the open end of the tube. Alyx sat very still as he inserted the needle into her arm and the tube filled up with her blood. When he pulled the needle away, the tiny hole closed up immediately. She stood.

  “I ain’t done with you yet.”

  She sat back down.

  He turned to his bench, unscrewed the needle from the tube, replaced it with a stopper then sat it in a holder. He turned back to her. “Tell me about this sight of yours.”

  “I saw a Rogue kill a Darkened as it was happening.”

  “As it was happening?”

  “As far as I could tell. By the time I got to her the Darkened was dead but her blood was still wet. She was freshly killed.”

  “Go on.”

  Alyx told him about her vision and about the Rogue whose eyes she had seen it through. She left out the part where she dreamed his dreams, where she felt what he felt, thought what he thought, and of these…desires building inside her.

  “What I don’t understand is,” she said, “why didn’t I see it in time to stop it?”

  “Seems like a pretty useless vision if that’s the case.”

  “Why that Darkened?” Alyx continued. “Why her death? What is so important about her?”

  “How should I know? I’m not an Oracle.”

  “So I’m an Oracle?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who’s supposed to be an Oracle.”

  Alyx quashed an urge to throw something at his head. “You’re not very good at answering questions.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps you’re the one who isn’t good at asking them.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe you aren’t asking the right questions.”

  “What would be the right questions, then?”

  “That is a very good question.”

  Mayrekk turned to his work bench where Alyx could hear him clinking around as he searched for something. She glared at his back. She could beat answers out of him. She’d get in trouble. But it’d be fun. She quelled that urge and tried a different approach. “You knew Raphael, didn’t you?”

  “I knew him.”

  “You were...friends?”

  “You could say that.”

  “And he spoke to you about his sight?”

  “Sometimes we would talk.”

  “They say that my sight is different. Different than Raphael’s.”

  “It is.”

  “How is that?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  Alyx chewed her lip. “Are they getting any better?”

  The clinking stopped. Mayrekk looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Maybe,” he said, a small sly smile crawling across his face. “Raphael didn’t view things through the eyes of another as you do. He saw images, heard voices or sometimes he would get an overwhelming feeling of just knowing what would happen but always from an…omnipresent perspective. His visions showed him possible futures, not what is happening like yours did. Ah ha, gotcha.” Mayrek
k picked up an empty glass vial from another basket. It was a bloodink vial. It looked delicate like an eggshell against his bearish palm. With his other hand he picked up the tube of Alyx’s blood.

  “What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

  “Distill it. Once I’ve got the pure magic out of it, then we can see what it really is.”

  “So if it’s Oracle magic?”

  “Then you’ll be back here regularly to donate.”

  Alyx blew out a breath. “Lucky me.”

  She felt the room heat up and ripples of power ran across her skin, causing her hairs to rise on end. This was powerful magic. She tried to see what he was doing but she couldn’t see around his broad back.

  The heat in the air faded. Mayrekk lifted the bloodink vial to the light. It was still empty. He spun around so quickly it startled her. “Can you see my soul?”

  “What?”

  “My soul, child. You know what a soul is?”

  “Of course I know what a soul is.”

  “Well, can you see mine?”

  “No.”

  “Have you even tried?”

  Alyx spluttered. “I… No.”

  Mayrekk grunted.

  “I didn’t even know Seraphim could see souls.”

  “They can’t.”

  Alyx blinked at him. “Then why did you ask me−”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  She sighed and did so. “What are we doing?”

  “Focus on your breath. Imagine that you’re−”

  “Is this some kind of relaxation thing? Because I don’t do that.”

  “Obviously,” Mayrekk muttered. “It’s not relaxation.”

  “So what−”

  “Imagine you’re weightless, floating in air.”

  Fine, I’ll do it, Alyx thought, if it’ll get me out of here faster. She sat in the darkness behind her closed eyelids listening to Mayrekk’s voice.

  “Focus on your breath. With each breath your body becomes lighter and lighter.”

  Her skin began to tingle ever so slightly, slowly, then building and spreading until she was submerged in tingles. The lines between where her skin ended and the air began started to blur. Her vision opened up to her. She saw Mayrekk’s hut around her but before her was a shining light where Mayrekk stood.

  She became like fog, mist, expanding until she was everywhere, rushing against the turn of the Earth. She was threading between mountains, skipping across islands, tickling the upturned belly of the oceans. Then she was soaring over the entire Earth as if she were its atmosphere. Below her the Earth was lit up with tiny golden orbs of melted gold, a landscape of burning stars. She scanned the field of lights below her looking for something, but she wasn’t sure what.

  Then she saw it. A single ball of flame. She didn’t know what it was about that ball of flame that made it so different from the rest, but it was different. Her heart tugged towards it like a compass to its north. Her whole being wanted to curl around it, around its light.

  “What did you see?” Mayrekk’s voice snapped her back into her body.

  Alyx inhaled sharply and blinked with her own eyes again. “Lights. I saw lights. All over the world. And you had one.”

  “Souls,” the word dropped from Mayrekk’s lips as if it were a curse.

  I can see souls? She tried a joke. “So doctor, will I live?”

  Mayrekk didn’t laugh. In fact, if anything his face just grew more serious. “Get out.”

  “I was only joking.”

  Mayrekk grabbed her arm and began to march her through his hut. “Get out now and don’t tell anyone you’ve been here yet. Don’t trust anyone.”

  “What? Why?”

  “If the Elders find out you’ve been here, I’ll have to tell them what happened. You don’t want to get the wrong kind of attention.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s wrong with me?”

  “I can’t distill your blood. No bloodink.”

  No bloodink. Alyx remembered the empty vial from earlier. “What does that mean?”

  “Your visions, this magic − it isn’t part of you.”

  “If it’s not a part of me then what is it?”

  “I can’t help you. You have to figure it out.” Mayrekk shoved her out of his hut.

  “Figure what out?”

  “You were never here.” The door slammed in her face.

  Chapter 8

  The training fields of Michaelea stretched across the valley in a patchwork of open platforms covered by curved roofs of thatched grass. It hugged the curve of one side of the Great Lake, which turned into a river that twisted away like a blue and silver snake.

  Each training platform was made entirely of wood, each structural piece carved to fit with precision into the nearby pieces. Even here nature had encroached, with vines threading their way up poles and twining around beams, cupping the whole structure within green fingers. Across each ceiling, ropes criss-crossed randomly creating a chaotic web, an arena for their in-air training, one of Alyx’s favorites and one she excelled in thanks to her lithe size.

  Only lightwarriors ventured here. It wasn’t that the Elders or the Castus, the gifted Seraphim, weren’t allowed here; it was just that they never came. This early in the morning the city was silent.

  Alyx stood on her flock’s usual training platform and wrapped a thick, dark strap around each hand. With her confusing vision, those dreams and that strange encounter with Mayrekk, she needed to clear her head.

  “Your visions, this magic − it isn’t part of you.”

  She pounded her fists into one of the drop-sacks in a hypnotic rhythm. Beat, beat. Beat, beat. Slowly her tension eased, her mind grew quiet and he was forgotten.

  ...The demons were after him. They wanted him for something…

  Correction: He was almost forgotten. In truth, he hadn’t been far from her mind the last few days, random thoughts and feelings that she was sure were his intruding into her waking hours.

  Alyx heard a stifled sniff and knew she wasn’t alone. “Who’s there?” She glanced around as she wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand.

  “It’s just me,” said a voice from above. Alyx looked up to find Passar, another one of her warrior flock, sitting hunched on one of the cords of rope.

  “Passar, what are you doing up there?” She pushed herself up off the ground. She saw him rub his face and realized too late that he was wiping away tears. She hesitated, wondering if he would welcome her intrusion. But it was too late to turn away.

  She cleared her throat as she floated to a rope near him and seated herself on it, pretending not to notice his swollen eyes. She focused instead on the tiny caterpillar that was making its way across a nearby strand. “What are you doing up here?”

  “We...” his voice shook, “we used to sit up here, Elijah and I. Before training. We’d sit up here and talk. Just talk.” As Passar spoke, he twisted a misshapen piece of metal in his fingers encased within an elaborate open metalwork cuff. Passar saw her looking at it. “Elijah was always tinkering with things, metal mostly. He was obsessed with metals. He was a low-skill Alchemist, you know. But he was destined as a lightwarrior. His bloodline was too diluted for them to ever accept him as a Castus.”

  Becoming a Castus required being born with magic, otherwise you would end up a warrior.

  Passar caressed the cuff with his thumb. “I rescued it from his pod after he...” Passar swallowed. “It looks like he finally got the mixture right.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a magical pick.”

  “A what?”

  Passar pushed the cuff into Alyx’s palm. It was cold and surprisingly light.

  “See for yourself.” He nodded towards something across the platform.

  Alyx turned her head. An enclosed bench ran partway along the edge of the platform into which wooden weapons were thrown after practice. Next to this bench, a wi
de row of cases held swords, knives, staffs...real weapons with real blades blunted from use. A magical shield locked away the weapons, the shield only retracting by the command of the keye. Only flock leaders held keyes, bullet-like charms on the end of chains strung around their necks.

  Alyx turned back to Passar. “Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  She flew down off the ropes and landed in front of the case of weapons. “What do I do?”

  “Put the cuff on and stick your hand in.”

  She gave the cuff a look. A magical pick? Really? She looked around to make sure no one was watching. She slipped the cuff around her wrist, then flexed her fingers out towards the case. There was a crackling and snapping noise. Small green sparks flew from the metal. A glow rippled out across the surface of the case in a widening ring and the shield disappeared behind it, as if it was sweeping the magic away with it.

  Her fingers went straight into the case. Her mouth dropped open. “Impossible.”

  “Elijah was incredibly smart.”

  Alyx withdrew her hand. As the tip of her middle finger pulled away from the shield, there was a sucking noise and the green ripple closed in on itself. Alyx touched the shield with her other hand. It was solid.

  She flew back up to her place beside Passar. “How does it work?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about the combination of metals short-circuits the magic in the shield when it’s close enough. At least that’s what I understood when Elijah tried to explain it to me.”

  “Does it affect the shield long term or leave behind a trace or anything?”

  “He didn’t think it would.”

  Alyx pulled the cuff off her wrist and held it out to Passar.

  “You keep it,” he said. “Elijah would have wanted you to have it. I have another one.”

  “Really?”

  “Truly. You were one of the few here he truly felt comfortable around.” Alyx nodded, slipping the cuff back onto her wrist. Passar’s eyes glazed over again and he stared into the distance. “Sometimes when I first wake up, I forget that he’s gone and for a few moments, a few amazing moments, I believe he’s still alive.”

  Alyx laid her hand on his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”