First Apprentice

Chapter 23 Part 1

The obsidian gate loomed over the small depression Terry designated as a temporary summon site. Too exposed to be a valley, the barren mountainside only had one redeeming quality. It was a forty-five-minute hike to the nearest stream.

Water was the great purifier, or so my ancestor's journals claimed. It absorbed ambient magic like a sponge. The greater the magic, the more it took on. Before the First War, anchor points were remote locations used for transformations and rituals. Afterward, they became gateways to other worlds and were highly prized trade routes. Cities grew up around the Marstow and Dracon anchor points.

Aura poisoning ran rampant and mortality rates soared. No one understood the cause. Then Xhian-dae, Rainer's Seventh and now one of the Central Keystone's guardians, lost his five-year-old son. In his grief, he tested every substance in the house. Floorboards, scrolls, bedclothes, lentils, or so the stories went. I never asked Endellion what Xhian said when he discovered Headquarters had the highest ambient magic level of any inhabited world, measuring two-hundred-forty-five parts per thousand — a scant five points from a mandatory evacuation.

Endellion's Well poisoned everything it touched. Even if the Well's shields and filtration seals were fully operational, summoning the Central Keystone near a lake or river could easily trigger mass casualties and a full evacuation. Hence, the summon site as far away from the city's drinking water as Terry could send me without me being on another world.

Wind ripped across the barren landscape like a lumberjack's saw. Sleet stung my cheeks. The scent of snow hung over me like a shroud. It was either a warning of the winter already bearing down on me or simply the natural scent of a mature Marstow dae. Given my numb fingers and toes, my gold was on the latter.

I turned my attention back to the Central Keystone. His magic lapped against mine — gentle waves of mottled blues and reds where there should be a tsunami, so weak he barely felt alive.

Cracks radiated out of the Central Keystone's seal like spider webs clinging to an ancient barn door. No wider than my fingernail, each crack represented a fatal flaw. An attack, a mismanaged summon, anything really and we wouldn't have one dying gate. We'd have two.

For the hundredth time in the last four days, I questioned myself. I knew the risks. Uncle Manfred pounded them into my head from the time I could walk. He'd lived through too much to tell happy bedtime stories. Still, I summoned the Central Keystone and risked the Central Keystone and Selim's life along with the lives of everyone in that city down to the newborn babes.

Master Guardian Tessa, a class two dae who once fought Saar to a standstill, hovered at my elbow like a cross between a bodyguard and a grim reaper. Her taloned hands flexed with my every move and shadows danced around us — an illusionary shield of some sort. I recognized the type from Uncle Manfred's demonstrations, but I didn't know the specifics. Grandfather focused my lessons on Dracon magics, not Marstow.

A Marstow makes you think the house is on fire. A Dracon burns it to the ground.

As a child, I accidentally burned down Grandfather's carriage house. Less than a week later, I froze Martha's cat to death. Controlling my Dracon magics before they killed us all took priority.

Magic surged through my veins as the copper scent disappeared. I blinked. Swaying, I leaned my forehead against the gate and glanced down at my fingertips.

Clotted, again.

How many times had I torn open my own hands today? A dozen? More?

Magic only kept blood flowing and regenerating for an hour or so. Sometimes more, sometimes less. All I knew for certain was that I summoned him at dawn and the sun was now dipping behind the mountains.

At Tessa's request, I stopped playing early on and reverted to a more basic mix of blood and magic. She said it worked better for healing.

Claws grew from my thumbs. I sliced them across my cold-numbed fingertips and pressed my bloody hands back to the seal. Absently, I traced the nearest crack with my thumb.

My blood fizzed like the baking soda and vinegar experiments Cook helped me with. Black flames raced along the edges and then petered out as the gate sucked up my magic-laden blood like it was a sponge.

Heart pounding in my chest, I waited for a response. A whisper. A breath. Anything.

Nothing.

Reaching deep into my magical core, I pushed magic toward my fingertips. It swept down my arms like floodwaters escaping a dam and poured into the seal.

Fingers curled around my wrist and lifted my hand off the gate. I followed the arm up to Tessa's feathered face. "That's enough, Alannah."

"But my reserves —"

"Are reserves," she replied in a firm tone I'd never heard from her before.

Tessa was one of the few people Grandfather trusted with my secrets. He said I met her and Xhian the day after Diane lifted the Vinetta quarantine. I was two. When Grandfather turned my playroom into a war room, Tessa brought me dolls. The few times Grandfather left me in her care we played house. I didn't see her often, but when I did she treated me like she would any child my age. But I was no longer a child, and the Central Keystone's oversoul was her son.

Red stars flared in her ultramarine aura. Her voice cracked like a whip. "Do not make me report you, apprentice. You have other gates and other concerns. He will heal in time. He always has. No maintainer may exceed thirteen hours per summon, not even you."

"I still have magic."

The angry red receded as her tone gentled. "Alannah, you are alone up here. Helen stays in the city. There's no one watching your back. If you are attacked, help won't arrive until it's too late. Save your magic. You may need it," Tessa said.

"Truth," Helen's voice rang out.