He took it out, unfolding it curiously, and was surprised to find that it was the page of another book. However, while most of the books he had found at the manor were fine print, some even inked by hand in a delicate, precise script, this page looked as though it held the ravings of a madman. The writing was cursive, but seemed to follow no lines or pattern. Large, looping letters covered one another, some crossed out, others stuffed into margins. Alex tilted the page, trying to decipher it. Bit by bit, he pulled meaning out of the page.
Of our havens, it read, nine remained. However, they are lost lost LOST. Winterlight’s halls are dark now. Sungrove House’s trees have been mulched. One by one, we lose everything. One by one by one by one by—
The trend continued, the words spiraling around and in upon themselves, filling up the blank space of the page. Alex thought that the information was at an end when he found several more notes.
Of our havens, nine remained. Of those nine, we now have four. I record them here for the sake of any who might find this journal. If you are magical, seek these places. Kingstone Keep. Falleaf House. Stillwater House. Spellshadow Manor.
Alex stared. Suddenly, his heart was in his throat, lurching to and fro. Stillwater House was the sister school that had been mentioned earlier in the year as the place where disobedient students were sent; was it possible that it was a real place? Were there others out there, like them?
The page, however, wasn’t done.
Seek these places, and do not leave them, said the script, and it seemed that the writer had grown tired. The words were shaking, thin, unsteady things. If you wish to live, cower within their walls as I have done. Cower, and await the Glutton’s communion. We are all meat, and he is the mouth.
The handle of the door turned.
Alex jumped. He’d been so caught up in the page that he had completely lost track of his surroundings. Jari and Natalie, who had been chatting, looked at the door to the classroom as it opened a crack.
Aamir slid in through the gap, his eyes flicking around the room, then settling on his friends with familiar warmth. He wore long professor’s robes, but his face hadn’t changed. Jari let out a cry, bounding to his feet and all but throwing himself at the older boy, who caught him in a tight embrace and smiled.
“You’re late,” Jari muttered into Aamir’s shoulder.
“There was a lot to learn,” Aamir replied.
Natalie rose to her feet, walking over to Aamir and giving him a quick hug from the side.
“Welcome back,” she said.
Aamir nodded at her. “It is good to be back.”
In his chair, Alex quickly folded the page into quarters, then slipped it into his pocket. The action was almost unconscious; later he wouldn’t be able to say why he did it. It was an instinct, born of much time spent looking of his shoulder. He stood, walking to where Aamir was now trying to dislodge Jari from his waist.
“Your first class has rather poor attendance,” Alex remarked.
Aamir sighed, looking at the rows of empty chairs. “I guess it’s only to be expected,” he said.
The two watched each other for a long moment, and Alex thought he saw wariness in the other boy’s eyes. A cautious, distrustful look that had never been there before.
“What did you learn?” Alex asked.
And Aamir’s eyes slid away.
“Mostly we talked about the governance of the school,” he replied, finally managing to pull Jari away from his chest. “How classes are run, how to evaluate projects, how best to help the students. You know, boring stuff.”
Natalie’s smile flickered, her eyes tingeing with confusion.
“You must have learned something about this place?” she queried.
Aamir smiled apologetically, but once again the expression didn’t quite make it to his eyes, which continued to look anywhere but at his friends.
“The Head was rather sparing with the details,” he said. “I will say this, however. I do not think he is as evil as we have thought.”
Alex felt his face go blank. “What? He’s keeping us prisoner,” he said. “He makes people disappear.”
A ripple of pain flowed over Aamir’s face, and he bit his lip. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared up at the ceiling.
“I think it might be more complicated than that,” Aamir replied.
Frustration bubbled up in Alex’s gut, and he could see the same suspicious expression blossoming onto Natalie’s face.
“Aamir,” Alex began, “what—”
He let out a yelp of pain as Jari stepped on his toe. He glowered at the smaller boy, who smiled beatifically back at him.
“Let him be,” Jari said. “Aamir—sorry, Professor Nagi has had a long couple of days.”
The gratitude in Aamir’s expression as he looked toward Jari was vibrant, and Alex felt momentarily guilty. Of course Aamir was going through a lot. He had been in a duel to the death not a week ago, and since then had been stolen away by the most powerful wizard on the estate to do who knew what until being shoved back into a group of inquisitive friends.
“Sorry,” Alex conceded.
Natalie, however, seemed unimpressed. “We don’t exactly have the luxury of time.”
Aamir winced, and Jari’s back straightened. Before Jari could speak, however, Aamir held up a hand. As he did so, his sleeve fell down to reveal a small golden line wrapping around his wrist.
“I’m telling you all I can,” he said.
Alex stared at the mark on the boy’s skin, and his mouth went dry as he remembered the spearing blades of ice that had erupted from the place where he had severed the last such thing. Aamir’s brown eyes slid to meet Alex’s at last, and Alex could see something deep within his friend. It was something he had seen before, on the faces of the other professors.
Fear.
“I will do my best to keep you safe,” Aamir promised. “I will do everything in my power to protect you. Do not forget that.”
Alex stared at the boy, and again he recalled Derhin, staring up at Professor Lintz.
We were going to escape together.
He took a step back as Aamir sighed, his eyes wandering over them.
“I should get on with the lesson,” he said. “It’s stupid, but I am required to still teach these stances. Sit wherever.”
He turned away, walking to the front of the room as his friends sat down in a line in the front row. Aamir’s back slouched a little as he began to write down the notes for a new magical stance, his precise handwriting quickly covering the board. He was efficient, and direct in a way that Derhin had never been, and it was easy to see that he had been thinking about ways to teach for a long time, since far before the idea to actually take a teacher’s position had occurred to him. He taught with a fluid grace, his jaw set, his eyes hot with worry.
Watching him, Alex could feel a shiver running down his spine. They were back together—they had won. Overwhelming victory on all fronts. Derhin thrown down, Finder destroyed. Natalie’s curse removed. As Aamir chalked another line on the board, then turned to demonstrate a subtle hand position before elaborating on the types of magic it would be useful for performing, Alex found himself wondering why it felt like they had lost.
It was cold in the little room. Magic pressed against Alex from all sides, wrapping about him, poking at him like great teeth, gently kneading him until he was ready for consumption.
If you wish to live, cower within these walls.
Alex thought of the great gates, wreathed in impenetrable ivy, impossible to open or close for anyone other than a chosen few.
Cower, and await the Glutton’s communion.
Walls. Great, imposing walls that kept everything in.
We walk in dreams, the Head had said. It was only a matter of time before a nightmare followed us back.
Great, imposing walls that kept everything out.
Another chill ran down Alex’s spine. He hadn’t figured it out yet. He knew he didn’t have all the
information. Still, he thought of the crushed remains of Finder’s skull, and wondered if they had made a terrible mistake.
Epilogue
On the roof of the manor, Elias poured himself from one shadow to the next. His magical body elongated and warped, sliding into the mossy cracks between the old slates of clay, deftly avoiding starlight as he made his way over to a chimney and spilled down into it. He dribbled along soot-stained brick, dripping down into a long-dead hearth.
If he had been able to feel, he might have experienced something like triumph. The previous week’s plans had gone off beautifully. At long last, Malachi had been put to rest, and the school’s supply of young wizards would dry up with him. It wasn’t checkmate, not yet, but he had taken the Head’s queen, and now he was eyeing the king with his black eyes. Yes, if he’d been able to feel, he might have experienced triumph in that moment.
However, Elias wasn’t able to feel. Not triumph, not love, not hate. He had only the tattered remnants of a personality, carved into his very being in a final, desperate act by a terrified man. He had a purpose, and like a clock driving its hands perpetually toward the next minute, that cause drove him.
Elias emerged into a hallway, watching students talking in hushed voices, their arms folded and their eyes suspicious. He clung to the ceiling, curled tight into the shadow of a light fixture, magical tendrils webbing out along the seams of bricks to find his next hiding place. The students, he thought, never changed. They were as they had been, all those years ago. Scared, studious, and ignorant. It was how the Head liked them.
It was how he had been.
Elias pulled himself languorously into his next shadow, pausing as Alex, the young Spellbreaker, strode past him. Now there was an anomaly. By all accounts, the boy shouldn’t have been here. His presence was bizarre. But like a desperate man handed a sword in his moment of need, Elias was not one to complain. The boy was an incredible weapon. Effective almost to a fault. The only problem with him was his morality. That might get in the way before long, Elias knew. If the boy knew the whole truth, it was impossible to say what he might do.
Beside him was the girl. Natalie, Elias thought she was called, but he didn’t put much stock by her. She was ordinary. Talented, yes, but he had seen talent before. Had it not been for her association with the Breaker, Elias wouldn’t have even bothered to take notice of her. She was a pawn.
Elias slipped through a lock, crossing through the mechanics’ lab. Students sat, bent over their tables with loupes in hand, staring down at minuscule magic machinations that clicked and whirred under their carefully applied picks. A quick trip through the vents and Elias was in the alchemy lab, multicolored smoke clouding against the ceiling, strange smells and sounds rippling off the walls as students in long coats added to their mixtures with trepidation on their faces.
The small blond boy was here. Elias thought he was Greek, but he didn’t have a name for him. He was the new professor’s friend. He was stirring a violently green mixture with an absent expression on his face, a half-smile quirking his lips. Another pawn.
Elias considered the new professor as he slid back out into the hallway, darting between the quick little shadows of raindrops. The boy, Nagi, seemed smart and resistant, but he had a love for tradition that worried Elias. He might become a friend or an enemy. Either way, he was no pawn. He would be valuable in the conflict to come.
As Elias drew nearer the Head’s wing, the shadows grew heavier, and he let himself slide off the wall, congealing into the familiar form of a young man with a shock of black hair. He ran his fingers through it in a gesture that was more unconscious than useful. He had a lot of habits like that. Small, forgotten ticks of a person who used to be.
He turned his head to look at things, even though his eyes had nothing to do with the location of his head. He moved his hands to bring about his magic, even though he himself was the magic. Some part of him, some deep, central part, remembered. It remembered skin. It remembered blood. It remembered life.
But it was only a memory.
Elias nearly hissed as he came around a corner and found himself blocked by a small avalanche of gray ivy. The stuff was poison to his existence. Touching it would create pain such as he had rarely known, an unbinding of his essence. He slid away from it and found another path.
He strode down the hallway, his feet slipping into the shadows beneath them and making no noise at all. He was darkness. He was shadow. He was…
Who was he?
His mind, broken apart and pieced back together time and time again, strained. He thought he could recall something. Something distant, something burned into the very depth of his essence.
He remembered skin. He remembered the cold bite of manacles on his wrists as he struggled uselessly. He remembered the damp, dewy touch of the ivy as it hung heavy on his shoulders.
He recalled the scene. There had been three people. The Head had been there, along with a young man Elias knew to be himself, and another boy in shining glasses. That spectacled boy had…hurt Elias. He had chosen him, and seen him cast down. Had there been a fight? Elias didn’t remember.
In the hallway, Elias lost his form, collapsing as a shadow to the ground, curling into a corner and waiting to regroup as he shuddered with thoughts. Why had they been there? What had happened to his skin?
He dove deeper into the memory. The Head was doing something, writing a note down on the table. The young man he knew to be himself—what was his name?—was watching the Head with sad, determined eyes. The spectacled boy said something. Something useless. Something unimportant.
The Head turned, gently lifting the handle of a knife. It was a familiar and terrible object. A silver blade formed upon the empty hilt, spilling out like mercury upon a tabletop. The young man’s mouth went dry, his lips opening to unleash so many pleading cries and whimpers. He looked away. The stupid young man. He had ruined everything for himself. He had been so close.
Anger filled him, and he thrashed in his bonds, mouth open, spit dripping from his lips. The Head walked closer, the knife in one hand, and reached out.
It was like someone had pushed a wedge into the young man’s heart. The air went out of him. The very core of his being fluttered, wavered, evaporated. The young man watched in horror as the Head pulled a strand of red magic out of him, wrapping it around one finger over and over again. The Head was so gentle. So precise and gentle and cruel.
The young man strained, his head lolling, seeing the spectacled boy not looking, and now Elias recalled the boy’s name. Avery Derhin. The one who had become a teacher, had challenged him. Known he was an easy target. Cast him down as Elias had done to his master, once.
And how it hurt. The ache of his essence peeling from his very being was an exultation of pain. It made him giddy, made him laugh, feeling the lightness of his body, the fire in his breast, the hurt, the hurt, the overwhelming hurt.
His hands were moving. Forming signs he had told his students never to use, focusing his energy into all the right shapes. His arms were bound above his head, and his motions were far from perfect, but his mind was an anvil against which he tempered his will, and the spell took form. Derhin’s eyes widened. He said something. The Head gave Elias a sharp look with his piercing eyes.
And then, Elias was a shadow.
In the hallway, Elias tried to pant, but he had no lungs. He tried to stand, but he had no legs. He was magic, and he was lifeless. He was formless. He was nothing, and yet he was Elias. The memory he had been hiding within slowly melted, crumbling down around him like ice before a flame. He kept moving.
The gardens of the manor were in fine disarray today. The snags and brush cast wicked swaths of shadow for Elias to tread between, and he practically zipped across the grass, the blades not even trembling at his passing. He was not many things anymore, but he was fast.
The cemetery was in shadow. The sun had slipped behind the manor, and Elias noted with approval that the little golden line that blocked off th
e catacombs had been broken, leaving nothing but a tangled wreckage of ice.
The Breaker was coming into his own. If Elias could just give him the right information, he would be the perfect dagger.
Slipping over the snow and grass, Elias came to a headstone. There had never been a name there, but as he pressed his shadowy form into the stone, he could feel it all the same.
Elias Olkrum.
“Ah,” Elias panted, a heat blazing through him. He contorted into the form of a man, kneeling on the grass, his hands balled into fists as he heaved with pain. His name reignited his power. It gave him strength.
Beside his grave was another. It was newer, but no less blank. If he didn’t visit the little stand of headstones every day, he might not have even noticed it appear, but he did, and it had.
The image of a boy with glasses, staring at Elias as he thrashed in his chains, flickered through his mind.
In a flash, Elias was back in that room. His wrists chafed against the cold manacles. The magic burned at his fingertips. The Head held his silvery knife while Avery Derhin took a step back, his eyes wide.
The Head was a powerful magician, but an old man. He’d swiped the dagger down toward the crimson thread he’d pulled from Elias’s chest, but he hadn’t been fast enough. Elias had let out a hiss, his eyes open, his mouth moving in a single command as a shadow had poured from his fingertips which had formed the sign of anima. Elias the shadow had been born, and had flown across the room, sliding from shade to dark. Then the Head’s eyes had stared coldly as he’d slashed with the blade, and the little red cord emerging from the human Elias’s chest had been severed neatly at the base. The Head had stood there, and as shadow-Elias had fled, he’d seen the man sliding the life magic into a little black bottle. In his chains, hung from the ceiling, Elias had shuddered once, and then gone still.
And so, shadow-Elias had watched human-Elias die.
He’d fled out into the hallways. His memories had fallen apart. His emotions had died with his life.