Chapter 19: Chapter 18: In which Triand finds answers, and a Faceless lies dead in a hallway

Iwy stifled a scream as she awoke from unquiet dreams at dawn to find her master’s head three inches from her own. Triand had snuck in sometime during the night. She hadn’t changed out of her clothes and had only made it out of one boot. Her usual snores were muffled because she was lying face down on the pillow while her staff rested against the back of her neck.

As fascinating as the logistics of this display were, Iwy checked her own pillow for damage, climbed quietly out of bed, dressed, and tiptoed out with her boots in hand. It was a blessing that she had had the foresight to hide the Casebook of Magical Depletion in her bag again before going to bed.

“You’re up early,” Eliphas half-yawned, coming out of his own room in a tunic and a faded dressing gown, hair tousled as if he had tossed and turned quite a while. “Triand back yet?”

“Yeah, she’s sleeping.”

“Let her. I’m going to start getting breakfast ready.” He held out one hand. “And you are going to sit down and relax. I don’t get to play host often.”

In the kitchen, Eliphas filled the tea kettle with a gesture and poured himself a glass of water by means of his palm.

“If you like it that much you could have your own inn one day,” Iwy said, settling down at the table.

“I’d much prefer my own library.”

“Why not both? A library you can eat in. You could call it ... The Read and Repast Inn.”

Laughing and water were a bad combination, as Eliphas choked on his drink.

“The Nosh and Knowledge Tavern.”

“Are you trying to kill me?” he managed after coughing up half a lung.

“How can you choke on water when your powers are water? Just conjure it out of your lungs.”

He wiped his short beard. “I’m going to tell Triand she has a very cheeky apprentice.”

“Oh, I thought of another one. Lunch and Lore.”

“You stop that.”

He coughed one last time while he made sure the bread was cutting itself evenly and the eggs weren’t overcooking themselves. Iwy bit back more potentially suitable names while she watched him. Her mother would put her on kitchen chores forever if she could do any of that.

From upstairs came a thud and then Triand shuffled into the room, greying hair sticking in every direction. Iwy noticed only now that she was wearing her robes back to front. There were various shades of dark circles under her eyes.

“Mooorning.”

Eliphas stared. Took the pan off the heat. And stared. “You look like you got run over by a post coach!”

“Thanks, you’re looking lovely as well in your ancient Ertland tunic.”

He pushed her down the corridor. “Bath. Now. And brush that hair out. Can’t take you anywhere nice, can I?”

“Ugh, you sound like me old mam ...”

A few moments later, Iwy heard a splash and some well-selected protesting swear words. Eliphas yelped suddenly. Another splash followed, then a series. Iwy realised the two very grown mages with a responsibility for destroying a powerful and deadly magical item were involved in a water fight that lasted long enough for her to finish her eggs and bacon.

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After breakfast, they were almost out the door when Eliphas seemed to remember something vitally important. “Laundry call!”

“It’s fine, we’ll do.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Iwy interjected. “I’ll get them from upstairs real quick.”

Eliphas turned to Triand with a meaningful look. “See? She’s organised. Come on, it’ll all be dry by the time we’re back. When was the last time you washed those robes?”

Triand shook her head stubbornly. “They don’t get dirty, I’ve got a repellent spell on them.”

“What do I have to do to get you out of your robes?”

“You’re not equipped for that, sweetheart.”

Eliphas groaned like someone who had heard the same joke some five thousand times. “Fine. Have it your way. Hand me the rest.”

Iwy returned from upstairs with her travel blanket and her long-suffering kirtles. As a matter of prudence, she had rooted through Triand’s bundle as well and located the clothes she’d worn days before and her chequered blanket. Well, she was her apprentice. It was probably one of those things you had to do anyway that Triand forgot about.

“Fine,” Triand sighed. “I’ll help you.”

Eliphas raised an eyebrow. “The last time I saw you do laundry you accidentally summoned fifteen water sprites ...”

“That was one time!”

“Sit down, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Triand sat down heavily and looked at Iwy. She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the basement. “That man loves hosting people a mite too much. If he starts talking about dinner parties, run.”

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Everything at the library was exactly as the day before. Lady Grey fed and sorted books in her grey dress, her grey hair pulled into a bun like always, but there was a noticeable spring in her step. She gestured for Triand, who had barely taken her seat, to come closer and led her away.

Iwy glanced after them. “Please tell me they’re not snogging behind the shelf.”

“Keep reading,” Eliphas said, his own eyes firmly on the parchment in front of him.

Eliphas had used his advanced knowledge of the library system to get her more sources on the Eye. He had prepared a pile of scrolls for himself and Triand to go through for clues of the crucible, still under the pretext of researching wizarding orders.

“Look what I got!” Triand returned, her hair a bit tousled, but her arms laden with dark, leather-bound tomes. Symbols glowed on their covers.

“Those are from the restricted section,” Eliphas whispered frantically, looking in every direction for the head librarian. “I have to fill out a permission slip every time, and I work here!”

“I think the three of you are trustworthy enough,” Lady Grey said primly in passing. Iwy thought she saw her hand brush briefly against Triand’s back. The mage shoved a couple of the books over to Eliphas and Iwy.

Iwy’s turned out to be a volume about the last known whereabouts of mystical and powerful weapons. The author began with a warning that anything written here was to be taken merely as information and not as an invitation to go looking for said artefacts, as they were the most dangerous or destructive items ever to be described in writing. This sounded like something a mage would write to better sell her books, but as Iwy leafed through the pages, she thought that maybe the author had a point. Since this book had been in the restricted section, only high-ranking wizards had access to them, probably to prevent any student follies.

Iwy let her fingers glide over the rough cover and wondered if this Acarald had touched the same book at some point. If he’d been a member of the Inner Circle at the Riestran sanctum, he was probably as old as the wizards had been there, he could have had access to this or something similar.

She knew next to nothing about this person.

When the table finally became too full to host all of their literature, Eliphas got up, groaned as he stretched his back and began to put some of the load back. Iwy saw Woras approach him between the shelves. The head librarian looked rather cheerful. They seemed to be chatting about their presumed history project.

She read on. The Eye was rumoured to be buried in the lost underground city of Ustessa in a south-eastern country that probably had received a new name since the book had been written. It was said to have been placed in the tomb of an unnamed mage who had volunteered to protect the Eye for, indeed, eternity. It was clear how that had worked out. This underground city must have been where Triand had found it. She imagined an old wizard, older than head librarian Woras even, raising a gnarled, liver-spotted fist in frustration as he discovered the Eye was gone.

Iwy was about to imitate that gesture as she closed the book again and picked up the next scroll. “There’s no mention of any way to destroy it.” She rubbed her eyes briefly; why had no one thought to invent a keep-the-damn-ink-fresh-spell? Pouring over the smudged writing for hours wasn’t doing her any favours.

“Figures,” Triand mumbled without looking up. She was barely visible behind the volume she’d picked up. By her notes, the few bits Iwy could decipher, there were finally some hints as to what happened to the Crucible of Atrius approximately six hundred years ago. All she had to do now was follow the trail.

“What if the crucible doesn’t work either?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. Maybe we can go to the seaside and feed it to a whale or something.”

“That won’t work forever.”

“I know, but it might just be long enough for Acarald to die before he guts the right whale.”

Iwy bit her lip for a moment. Eliphas had worked his magic around them again; no one could listen in on their conversations. It was probably safe to ask. “I know nothing about this Acarald.”

Triand didn’t look up, distractedly chewing on her writing quill. “Well, he’s not dead enough to be in any of the books yet.”

“No, I mean, I want to know more. How’d you meet? When did he leave that sanctum? Why did you find the Eye before him?”

“I don’t know if … I mean, that’s a long story ...”

“I want to know what we’re up against. If he’s after you, he’s after me, right?”

Triand sat up and pinched the bridge of her nose. She sized her apprentice up and sighed. Her fingers fidgeted with the quill as she spoke. “Alright, look, we were close, yes? He was a teacher at Riestra when I got there, one of the Archmages, part of the Inner Circle. I was his favourite student, we had a lot in common ... he was always interested in discovering new spells, new techniques, and the wizards didn’t like him, either. So when he asked me to join his little private circle of magic friends, long after we both left Riestra, to reveal the patterns of magic, the mysteries of the universe, and other stuff wizards like, I said, sure. And it was great, for a while. Staying up until all hours inventing things, going on research trips, sharing results. And then, because we were such good friends, bit more’n a year ago he tells me about this absolutely bonkers plan to enslave all humankind, as you do ...” Triand hit herself in the face with the book she was holding and took some deep breaths. “You want the details? Alright…”

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She always thought about it as the Last Day, capitalised for sad reasons. He’d gotten back from one of his trips that day. They’d been out all afternoon, testing a new spell on the mountainside. At sunset, he asked her to pack up. He suggested they take a walk instead of teleporting. This wasn’t unusual. But then he had put his hand on her shoulder, in the way he always did, and said, “Triand, you know you’re my best mage.”

She had thought about the time delay spell they’d practised. It had gone wrong so many times. And how they’d ever get it portable… “Nah, I’m just the most destructive.”

He hadn’t laughed. “Please let me finish. I need to talk to you before I burst.”

She had thought maybe he was ill. Well, he wasn’t the youngest. And she knew he’d been very ill as a young man. Magic depletion, something like that. He’d recovered, but who knew ... it might come back. “What is it?”

“The dawn of a new age ...”

When he was finished she had been glad for the dark and overcast sky so he couldn’t see her face.

“And all you need is this Eye?” she had finally said, trying to keep her voice level.

“Well, not all, but it is the most important part, yes. We can begin preparations for the ritual, but I’d much prefer if I knew where the item was first. We need to be careful with our resources, after all.”

Triand had nodded seriously. “Sure, sure. So, why don’t I go look for it?”

“There are too many places it could be in, the scrolls are not very thorough ...”

“Oh, come on, you know I’m good at finding things.”

“You should take someone with you.”

“And attract attention?”

He’d smirked in the light he’d conjured in his staff and nudged her. “You’ll always attract attention. It’s your way.”

“I can be subtle. I can be very subtle.”

“Nevertheless, I will send out some others as well. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Yes, but we have no time to lose. I’ll leave in the morning. I have a good feeling about this.”

They’d teleported the rest of the way. In the dimly lit port room, he’d smiled at her, part relief, part pride. “I know I can always count on you.”

Triand had forced a similar smile on her face. As her mother had always said, when someone stabs you there’s no point in arguing about the kind of knife they used. The better plan was to pretend to go along with everything and find the artefact before him. Get rid of it somehow. She’d workshop the details on the road. All she knew for certain was she had just lost one of her best friends.

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Iwy felt slightly underwhelmed by the retelling. “That’s his plan? Rule the world?”

Triand massaged her temples. “No, no, that’d be too easy. Step one, obtain artefact. Step two, absorb power from all mages who defy you, so all the others will follow you more or less willingly. Step two-and-a-half, occas’nally sacrifice a few to the Eye. Step three, order your mages to kill all non-mages. Step four, profit, but I don’t really see how. He doesn’t care about ruling; he’d gladly leave the politics to other people. What he wants is for the world to reorder itself to his liking. To the way he thinks it should be run.”

“Why does he want to kill people who can’t use magic?”

“Because he believes he’s doing them a favour. Way he explained it to me, it’s not a life worth living without magic. He thinks …” Triand’s hands bunched her hair for a moment. “He thinks he’s being kind.”

Iwy blinked at her master. But, she wanted to say, there’s more non-magic folk than magic folk. It’s always been this way. Who’s going to do all the menial work that wizards never seem to do? What would he do if his children were non-magical? What about people like Eliphas? What about ...

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Iwy finally settled on: “That’s bonkers.” Sure, magic made some aspects of your life easier, but she had been doing pretty well without it. And she would be again once she figured out a way to get it out of her system.

“Tell me about it.”

Iwy glanced distractedly between the shelves where Eliphas grew older and tireder with every minute the head librarian talked. Woras yanked the younger wizard over to a writing desk. Eliphas met her eyes briefly, a look of silent suffering on his face. Iwy nodded to him and hoped it was encouraging.

She leaned back in her chair and looked again to Triand, who chewed on her quill again. She always said too much magic was easy to track. Not that she had ever explained what that meant. There was always something she was holding back. She might not get an answer to her next question, but Iwy had to ask before she exploded.

“I saw what you did to those witch hunters. Why didn’t you ...”

“Kill him? Thought you were against killing people.”

“You could lock him up.”

“That kinda prison needs to be build first.”

“You never tried to fight him?”

Triand shrugged. “Not really. Went away before it got to that. He might just be a teensy bit stronger than I am. ‘Course he’s got an unfair advantage on account of his age. If we could wait another forty years, I could mop the floor with him.”

“Wouldn’t he be dead by then?”

“That’s one of the reasons I could easily mop the floor with him.”

Iwy turned back to her pile of frustrating literature. So, a mad wizard who was almost impossibly strong already, and some artefact she’d never laid eyes upon that was almost impossible to destroy. Triand couldn’t have picked herself an easier quest.

Only two weeks ago she had been getting ready for harvest season and yelled at her brother Derek to stop pushing his chores on her and the other siblings. Now she was researching things she had never thought existed.

And she might have to do this for decades.

Iwy tried to banish any thought about the book on magical depletion that was in her bag and how many others might be lurking on the shelves just waiting for her desperate hand. All of it would have to wait until they found the crucible. “This would be easier if we knew how the Eye worked. Any details. Then we could find out how to make it not work anymore. These books only mention that it’s used, not how. Why did no one think that might be worth a mention?” Iwy leaned back heavily and pressed her palms into her eyes for a moment before riffling through her notes. “And there’s the other thing. All we know is that it needs some sort of blood ritual with around ...” More riffling until she found the scroll. “... the blood of a hundred mages. And nothing more is mentioned. Only that it needs magical blood.”

“I guess the Eye drinks it.”

Iwy looked at Triand sceptically, then at the barely legible smudged ink of the scroll in front of her. “Blood of a hundred people. That’s around five or six hundred litres of blood. How big is this Eye?”

“I don’t think it drinks it all at once, if it does. It’s probably more of a ... steady supply. The hundred people was probably more because the number sounded nice. Or because someone was planning on using it a long time.”

“So, do you think Acarald ... because we haven’t heard anything about, I don’t know ... bloodless corpses turning up anywhere. Or people vanishing.”

Triand bit her lip. “Yeah, but his order isn’t even located in this country. News travels slow.”

“Even so, there might be someone going ‘Hey, d’you know what I heard is happening over there?’” Iwy turned a page. “I found a text that said the Eye was draining a hundred people a day. You think that’s possible?”

“Maybe with some large-scale sorcery. Or the author just wanted to sell more…” Triand started and almost slid off her chair. “Iwy? Maybe I haven’t told you everything about the Eye.”

“I knew it!”

“Keep it down! Listen ... and I don’t know if it’s in any way right, but… The dragon said ­– yes, that dragon – the Eye belonged to a sea creature what fed on blood, long time ago. Giant magical beast probably had a big demand of energy, right, might have fed on other equally giant magical beasts. Maybe six hundred litres are around as much as its usual prey. Maybe this’ll wake it, or something. I mean, seems it’s already an eye and a mouth combined, why can’t it be another sensory organ for prey detection? Might be why it absorbs magic, to render its prey defenceless. Which is pretty fascinating considering it’s been detached from its body for thousands of years. Now that’s something I’d wanna research, I’ll add it to the personal list for later…”

“Alright, one: Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? And two: Why is this never mentioned anywhere else?”

The mage shrugged. “Maybe people forgot. Dragons live a lot longer and they have great memories, all things considered.”

Iwy wasn’t going to get an answer to her first question. “It’s very hard to destroy for an organ.”

“I guess millennia of magic exposure might have made it a bit more durable.”

“Have you ... you never told me if you tried to destroy it on your own.”

“First thing I did. I’m still trying. And it’s a Hellish risk.”

“Is that why there’s always something smoking when I wake up?”

“Maybe. I’m just not good at destroying things. Deliberately,” she added when Iwy gave her a look that had “sanctum roof” written all over it. “I tried it with a well-timed explosion, then a large-scale explosion, I tried cooking it ...”

“Cooking?”

“I thought maybe it might burst. Or shrink. Or something. Then ...”

It was a long list. She’d let it get hit by lightning. She’d tried to dissolve it in chemicals that dwarves used to tunnel through mountains. She’d gotten so frustrated she took an axe to the thing. Then an enchanted axe. At some point, Triand had fed it to a badger, but it only gave the poor animal indigestion. She had tried to turn it into a badger in the hopes it might wander off into the woods. She paid a bard to perform “Who rolled the cheese to the stagecoach” 76 times hoping it might spontaneously self-destruct but had to stop before the bard did. She’d tried to enchant it to look like a rock to toss it in the sea. The spell hadn’t taken hold. Neither had any for a bunch of pebbles or a handful of sand or, Hell, a bread bun. Then she had tried to put it into a pocket dimension that only opened via a complicated ritual, the highlight of which was singing all verses of “Mistress, watch where you put your hands” without mistakes. The Eye had bounced back out after two seconds and smacked her in the face. By the time she had thought about going far South or far East for a solution, the Faceless had already figured her out.

“Then I started looking for a more thorough way and that’s how I got wind of the Crucible. Well, a mention of a sort of destructive pot, really, in the beginning. My Ancient Enuin was never up to scratch.” She sighed and took another huge volume from her pile. “There’s no spells around it that I can detect. Not even Marg’s Shield or a bit of Torus’ Dourness. It’s just really, really stubbornly hard to destroy. I’m kinda at my wit’s end.”

Iwy kept staring at the page she had read five times over. “What happens if I don’t get good enough?”

“Well, then let’s hope the crucible is still transportable. We’ll have to find eight other fire mages to heat it up, then. Maybe I can bribe them ... I need money. I need to get a decent job. An actual job. Iwy, how do I get a job?”

At this moment, Eliphas returned, looking as though he had been through a marathon. “Woras gave me a list of recommendations for our project.” The parchment unrolled itself over the length of the table. Then off the table. “Something to check out tomorrow. They’ll close in a few minutes.”

“I almost got it,” Triand said, gnashing on her quill as she leafed hastily through pages. “I just started this book, I think there might be something in here.”

It was a popular book. So many generations of wizards had opened and shut and consulted and cursed and spilled drinks over it that the leather was as hard and cracked and dented as a canyon. One of the fastenings was nearly ripped off from being fiddled with while thinking. The upper corner protection was missing entirely, leaving the material to fray.

Eliphas spied the title. “Details of Fantastic History Vol. IV: Unabridged Data on Ancient Interior by Hebeta the Crone?”

“I got a good feeling about this.”

“I don’t even know why they put it in the restricted section.”

“It tells you where everything is. Like, everything. Even Mardecai’s Chest of Doomed Visions and Asok’s Spineripper, Breadbasket of the Ancients.”

Iwy was about to ask if it also told the current location of the Eye, then thought better of it. Seeing the description “staff of the really weird mage Triand” in a book was too unlikely even for wizards. It probably wouldn’t fall under the category of interior anyway.

“I don’t want to know what that is,” Eliphas said. “I’ll tell Woras to reserve the book for you.”

“Nah, we’ll take it back to your place and look there. I’m very sure.”

“Books from the restricted section must be read in the library.”

“Says who?”

“There are special protections on those books. They return automatically after a while. If you take one out of this room without permission, you get a nasty zap. You can’t just walk out with it.”

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In the end, Triand just walked out with it.

She shoved it down her shirt, buttoned her billowing robes, and marched out while nattering on about whether the Order of the Black Dawn had really grown out of the Sect of Omega. Eliphas asked in a hushed voice if Lady Grey had removed the spell around the book for her, but Triand told him not to worry.

At his house, Eliphas closed and locked all windows and pulled the curtains shut with a wave of his hand. Triand and Iwy took the dry laundry in – and another wine bottle – before he locked the basement too. He only lit candles, none of the lamps, before dragging his staff around the main room, making sure no one would listen in, as unlikely as that was.

“Think that’ll be enough?”

“Don’t think any librarian will come after us. Let’s have a look.”

Triand heaved the tome on the table. She took a gulp from her looted bottle before she opened it.

The wind blew stronger than the last days, heralding a storm. The timbers of the house creaked.

The script had a blurred look to it, settled comfortably on the pages like a grandmother in an armchair. Since the index was missing entirely, Triand went through every page she hadn’t consulted yet, with the two others hanging over her.

“There we are, objects of destruction. Canopic Jar of Decay, ew. Madame Morosca’s Cauldron, presumed lost ... Celestial Void Box, whatever that is ...” Triand breathed out heavily. “Finally!”

Iwy drew closer. The Crucible of Atrius had been designed by Atrius of Nynlona, a country that at this point in time had been subsumed into three others. Iwy had expected the faded ink drawing to show a tall cylinder, its surface covered in rows of symbols she didn’t know but the other two would recognise as important. The actual picture seemed to have ended up on the page by accident.

“A statue?” Iwy said doubtfully.

“I mean, he was an artist before he became a full-time wizard,” Eliphas shrugged.

The black lines formed a humanoid figure, its shapeless hands holding its torso open like a curtain, the cavity filled with fine-lined flames. Arcane symbols and runes had been carved on the surface alright, but that was not what Iwy noticed first. Atrius hadn’t bothered to give the crucible a face, but at least in the picture, it still somehow managed to look annoyed, as if one too many drunk wizard student had stolen into its chamber late at night to put a hat on it.

The First War of the First Foundation had been so bloody and involved so many losses, by the time the Second War rolled around, Atrius, the book claimed, had found a solution to the problem. Or at least a way to curb the destructive potential of magic users a little. Up until then, it had been tradition to hand powerful arcane objects to trusted mages for safekeeping. This practice had a fatal flaw thanks to the rise of accidental mercenaries who could be easily swayed with a story of an evil wizard living in a tower holding on to an object of even more evil, and the promise of a substantially glittering reward. Much more feasible to get rid of these objects, Atrius thought, even if it took forty years to get the Crucible up and running. It kept dangerous weapons out of the wrong people’s hands. He’d deployed an entire army of researchers and adventurers to rid the world of every orb, staff, carved skull, crystal skull, crystal with skulls on it, enchanted dagger, possibly sentient sword, oddly shaped hat, and magically appearing flower bouquet that might pose even the littlest threat to society.

That plan was of course doomed to fail because people who like power don’t like people who can destroy the source of it. By the Third War of the First Foundation Atrius was long dead, the city he’d lived in in ruins, and the Crucible was engaged in a geographically challenging game of hide and seek.

The book went on to list a few notable occurrences of the crucible after that, most of which Triand and Eliphas had been able to deduce from other literature. And at the end of the list was ...

“‘Sealed in the artefact room in Ermeres’. The Lost City. I’ve heard about that place.” Eliphas sucked air in through his teeth and twisted his robe sleeve. Above him, the ceiling creaked as another gust of wind swept around the house.

Triand tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Think it’s still there?”

“Likely. The city was abandoned centuries ago after some sort of accident. Can’t quite remember ... a summoning gone wrong I think it was. Entire town population wiped out in a day ... I don’t think anyone goes near it. I heard of an expedition some years ago, they said the ruins are haunted.”

“So what? Every old place is.”

“One of the mages is still with the healers of Iwohone. And not as a member. All I’m saying is, be careful.”

Eliphas got up and dug around his private library for a while. After moving several precarious stacks of books, he found the maps he was looking for and spread them both on the table. “Let’s see ... Ermeres was in a mountain range that used to be called the Changeheads. Name’s changed since then. Little ironic. It’s now…” Another map was unfolded. “This mountain ridge here ... Basner Heights ... yes, it’ll be on the mountain now called Deer Peak, not very high.”

Triand looked over his shoulder. “Wait, wait, wait, it’s in this country?” She followed the places he had pointed out. It was in the far north, not quite at the coast, but close.

“Yes. Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I’d kinda hoped it be far away. Really far away.”

“Why? You’ll get there faster. You only need to follow the western road out of Prey and go on along the forest ... take the turn here ... follow this ... If you leave out the Black Forest roads and the rest of the Witchhead mountains here and go along here, you could be at the foot of Deer Peak in two weeks. Seems the best idea. The last thing you want to do is take the ... artefact to the lawless parts of the north.” He hastily grabbed some unused paper and began to trace the old map.

Triand had scoffed at the mention of ‘lawless north’, as if that was a minor obstacle compared to everything else. “Main road seems a bad idea.”

“It’s the quickest way. You can teleport a bit.”

“I’ll think about it,” she mumbled as she folded the sketch of the map into a pocket of her robes.

Eliphas read on in Ancient Interior. “Says here the Crucible is protected by a number of traps ... physical, mental ... there might be some riddles involved ...”

“Of course it is, why should my life be easy?” Triand clapped the book shut and turned to Iwy. “We best leave as soon as possible.”

The candles all went out at once.

“You didn’t accidentally summon anything, did you?” Eliphas said through the dark.

“It’s a history book, what could I possibly summon? The demon of useless facts?”

There came the creak again.

“That definitely came from upstairs,” Iwy whispered.

Eliphas summoned the candle flames again only to see them snuffed out mere seconds later.

Iwy shifted out of her chair while the mages groped for their staves. “Maybe we should have put out salt.”

“I don’t think it’s a ghost,” Triand whispered as her staff lit up.

For a moment, there was an absolute absence of sound, by people on either side of the floorboards.

The three of them stood staring at the ceiling, harking for any creak.

A wave of energy threw them off their feet. Maps and scrolls scattered around the room.

“There’s one in the corridor!” Eliphas yelled, aiming and taking a blast to the shoulder before he could do anything.

His protective magic over his house had apparently not held up. The obsidian-coloured mask glinted in the faint light of Triand’s staff. It had been only a matter of time until they found them again, but the mage had sort of hoped for another half hour.

“Hand over the staff and I won’t hurt y...” There was a thud as the wizard walked into a bookshelf that Triand had placed before him in the blink of an eye.

“Come on!”

They took refuge in the kitchen.

“Got any power?” she said to Iwy as they crowded against the wall, out of sight of the door frame.

“Don’t ... think so.”

“Alright. How’s the shoulder?”

Eliphas opened and closed his hand a few times. “It’ll be fine. No damage, just hurts.”

They fell silent. They hadn’t heard the shelf move, but there were footsteps outside.

Triand squinted through the shadowed room. She had always held the firm belief that the kitchen was the most useful room in any house. Not only did it hold all the food (and often the alcohol too) but also all the household’s knives, heavy pots, at least one mallet, roasting spits, and the tea kettle. In a witch’s kitchen you could additionally find enough poison to stall an army. Eliphas was missing the last part, but everything else was in order. Triand went to work.

A drawer opened quietly millimetre by millimetre and set the knives free.

Triand pulled them closer to the door frame. “Eli, remember that business with the Spellweaver brothers?” The knives rose and vanished. Triand’s gestures let them move into the corridor.

“Yeah. Let’s try.”

Eliphas shrugged off his robes and hung them on a long wooden spoon that floated by.

“Just say when,” Triand breathed. Eliphas nodded and slowly held his robes out the door frame. A blast hit the cloth.

“Now!”

There was a wet sound and a suppressed scream as the invisible knives buried themselves into everything and everyone in the corridor.

Eliphas breathed out loudly. “You got him.”

“That’s our cue, we should leave. You should too, in case they’ll send more.”

Eliphas nodded. “You’ll need your stuff.”

They stepped over the fallen wizard and sprinted up the landing to the guest room. Iwy went to grab their bags.

She stopped dead in the doorway when she heard another creak above them from the attic observatory.

“Of course. They come in pairs now,” Triand grumbled.

The Faceless appeared next to her. “The staff!”

“You got it!”

The lower half of the staff hit him between the legs. He dropped to the floor. Eliphas made a grab for him.

His hand went through the robes as the wizard melted into the floor.

Iwy stared at the spot. “What the ...”

The wizard dropped on her head. She heard Eliphas mutter “Phase magic” with a bit too much admiration as the wizard put her in a chokehold. The black mask turned to Triand.

“Hand me the sta...”

Iwy’s elbow burrowed into his chest below the breastbone. Her foot came down on his instep and her fist on his groin. No amount of phase magic made a wizard expect the farm technique.

Eliphas threw out his arm. The girl ducked. The only window in the guest room shattered as the other wizard was hurled through it. It was only one floor; all three knew it was not going to stall him for long.

Triand grabbed her bundle which she hadn’t bothered to unpack. “We need to go. Iwy, get your bag. Both of you get ready for emergency teleportation.”

Iwy was with her in a matter of seconds.

“Eliphas?”

He stood panting on the floor, not moving. He bit his lower lip as if he was thinking hard about a decision that could only end in unpleasantness.

“Eliphas, come on!”

He shook his head as he performed a series of gestures with his free hand. Light began to dance around his feet. “He can’t follow both of us. I’ll teleport one way and you another. You go on.”

Beads of sweat formed on his brow as the light slowly formed into swirls.

“I’m not leaving you behind.”

“I can hold my own, Triand,” he said through ragged breath.

“You’re already exhausted, you need to come with us.”

“I can do it. I promise. You need to finish this.” With a swish, the white and purple swirls congealed to form an oval around him.

For a few seconds, no one spoke. Then Triand nodded. “Be careful.”

“Of course.” He drew her to him briefly. “I love you.” And with that, he let the whirl take him.

Triand got hold of Iwy’s arm. “Hold on. I mean it. If we get separated, you’ll end up gods know where. Don’t hold your breath, it feels worse if you hold your breath.” She breathed out heavily. “I hate this.”

Iwy tried to concentrate on breathing as the world blurred and spun. The sensation was exactly like someone trying to pull her bones out through her flesh. It seemed to go on forever.

They fell on the dusty western road five miles away, wedged between the forest and the edge of the cliffs around the lake. Triand staggered towards a roadside bush. Iwy could hear her throw up. Her sides hurt as if she had run all the way and she felt cold. On closer inspection, this was due to the rip in her trousers. She really needed to set aside a minute to fix her clothes.

Iwy picked herself up and checked her bag. Nothing seemed to have gone lost. She looked back towards the distant city and the black nothingness that was the lake at night. If she remembered the map correctly, they were on the exact road they should have taken anyway, along the forested mountains. But what with the Faceless they might have to walk throughout the night just in case someone still followed them.

Triand emerged from the bushes and observed the tiny lights of Prey for a moment. All was quiet except for the howling of the wind under the cloudy sky. A few drops of rain hit her head. “I think the worst is over for now.”

“Forever the optimist, aren’t you?” someone said behind them.