Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4)

C
opyright © 2015 by D.K
. Holmberg

Cover by Damonza

Editing by Shelley Holloway

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T
he air held
the bitter stink of burned ink that came from the painting I had attempted. It was a controlled painting, but one without much energy. I didn’t dare draw too much through the orb, not until I knew if it would work for me. Even then, I wasn’t certain it was a good idea.

Every attempt I made to use the patterns etched into the smooth orb fizzled out, leaving me with nothing more than fatigue and my head swimming from the effort. Oh, and failure. Always failure.

I sighed and pushed back from the simple wooden table I’d dragged down into the lower level of the shed. There wasn’t much room for it, so I’d shoved it against the back wall, almost forcing me to stare at the orb while I sat at it. Like pretty much everything else in the lower level of the shed, the orb was a creation of my father’s, created with painter magic so that the patterns were trapped beneath the surface, leaving the rest of it smooth and cool. Every attempt to power it by pushing my will through the patterns failed. Not only was I getting tired, I was feeling annoyed.

“Why won’t this thing work for me?” I said, setting it carefully back on its little wooden pedestal. I might be annoyed, but I wasn’t about to damage it. If I did, I might not know enough to replace it, and then, any hope of using its power would be gone.

“Probably because you’re not the Elder.”

I twisted in my seat toward where Devan sat along the wall. She hadn’t moved from her spot since we’d come down here, determined to keep me out of trouble and unwilling to leave me to study the orb alone. Not that I blamed her. Attempting to use the orb’s power—or anything of my father’s, really—always carried danger.

She pushed some strands of dark hair away from her eyes. In the time that we’d been on this side of the Threshold, her hair had grown longer. She still had some of that pixie look to her. As one of the Te’alan—creatures much like fairies or elves—she’d always have that, but now she had more exotic features that mixed in, as well. In the last week, we’d discovered that we were a bit more than friends. Okay, maybe
I’d
discovered. I suspected Devan had known all along, which was why she so often called me an idiot.

“I made this thing work once before,” I said, running my hand over the orb. There was no doubting the power that hummed within it. There was also a faint glow to it, as if the orb trapped power inside that could only be released by the Elder.

“Not that one, Ollie. You said it yourself. The orb you used with Adazi had an arcane pattern that you’d placed on it. That was why you were able to use it.”

“You’re saying I keyed it to myself?”

Devan clutched one of her small figurines in her hand and turned it side to side, making the little troll figure almost dance. “Why are you so hell bent on getting the orb to work?”

I glanced at the miniature statue sitting on the desk. It looked like Nik, down to the furrowed brow and the way his hand pressed out from him, like he was trying to stop a car barreling down on him. Considering what it was, it
should
look like him. I’d used another device of my father’s on Nik, shrinking him into this statue and trapping his magic. This way, he couldn’t do any more harm, but nor could he teach me what he’d learned from the Druist Mage. If I was to have any hope of challenging the Druist Mage, I would need what Nik had learned.

“You know why I need it. You don’t want to get drawn into the crap on the other side of the Threshold, either, so why are you giving me a hard time?”

Devan shot me a look that told me, once again, that I really was an idiot. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we all nearly died stopping Nik the last time. What about the shifters that had been practically useless against his power?” She jabbed a finger in my direction. “Really, Ollie, if you release Nik—”

“I’m
not
going to release him. I’m just going to unfreeze him a little.”

She snorted. “A little. Like you know how to do that.”

I picked up the statue of Nik and held it up to the light. Could he feel me touching him? The idea made me kind of want to bash him on the desk a few times for what he’d done, but his imprisonment was more than enough torture for him now. His power was trapped. Hell,
he
was trapped. I didn’t know if he would age or change stuck in this form, but he couldn’t hurt us. The problem was, he couldn’t
help
, either.

“I figured the orb could help.” I’d been studying it the last three days straight. Devan had come with me each time, sitting with her little figurines, prepared for the possibility that I might unleash Nik back into the world. At least with her miniature army, she could protect us, probably more than anything I could do. She still hadn’t shared what it was she did to bring her figurines to life, but I suspected it was similar to what I had with the statues my father made, the prison that he’d created, but Devan didn’t elaborate for me.

“I’ve told you that using the orb is risky. What if you bring him all the way back, rather than only partially like you intend? Before you try, you need to be able to
control
the power of your father’s orb, so you can access Nik in such a way that he’s not fully released.”

That was the challenge. And maybe that was the reason it didn’t work for me. I wasn’t trying to fully power the orb, only partly. In some ways, that took even more strength because I couldn’t simply blast through the patterns etched into the glass.

“That’s why you’re here,” I said.

Devan glared at me. I didn’t expect anything different. “I’m here to make certain you don’t go doing anything too stupid.”

“Other than releasing Nik?”

She shrugged. “That, or other things.”

I smirked at her and turned back to the orb. It was a creation of the Elder, but then again, so was I. I had managed to figure out some of his patterns, and part of me assumed that—because I was his son, I was meant to. Like it was my destiny. He had given me the golden key that granted access to this place, after all.

Placing my hands on either side of the orb, I focused on the series of patterns that were barely visible in the layers beneath the glass. If I stared long enough, I could make out the patterns well enough to know what they were, if not what they were intended to do. That was a trick of my father’s, a master painter of such skill that I’ve never known anyone to rival. There were other magical beings out there capable of throwing around more power than my father, but he had a unique skill, one that I needed to master, or Devan and I would end up dead. It was why I was willing to risk releasing Nik back into the world, however briefly that might be. If Nik could teach me some of the tricks he’d learned from the Druist Mage, I might actually come up with a way to keep us alive.

The orb started glowing as I pressed my will through the pentagram. I split my focus, a trick few painters ever managed, and pushed through the intersecting stars, as well. Then I added the triangles, focusing on the isosceles triangle pointing toward my feet. There was a complete series of patterns stretching around the other side of the orb, but if I used them, I would end up fully powering the orb. With all the little miniature prisoners stationed throughout the lower level of the darkened shed, I was pretty certain I didn’t want to do that.

Power surged for a moment and then fizzled out. The energy it took from me was more than the patterns should have taken, probably more than it would have taken even a few months ago when I was flexing my magical muscles on a daily basis. Lately, I’d needed to do it in bursts, taking days to recover in between.

I let the power ebb away and stood up from the table. It didn’t seem to matter which of the patterns I used, I couldn’t figure out a way to partially power the orb. I suspected that if I were to charge them all, the orb would work, but then again, I had never even tried that. And didn’t want to, at least not down in the shed where there was the risk of accidentally freeing one of the prisoners.

“Didn’t work?” Devan asked.

I shook my head and wiped an arm across my face. Taking Nik carefully, I carried him over to the shelf—the cells of this prison—and set him gently next to what looked like some sort of samurai warrior. The man had long hair tied up in a knot atop his head and carried a sword slung over his shoulder. His eyes were slightly widened, making me think he’d been surprised when the Elder had captured him. I wished he had kept some sort of record as to
why
these creatures were trapped here. So far, I’d found nothing.

“What if they’re not all bad guys?” I asked, turning to Devan.

She looked up from her figurine. Unlike the little statues here—my father’s little prisoners, I’d seen Devan carving the one in her hand, using fine metal rods to shape the troll’s features. She did it with an almost loving way, but had methodical movements. I had wondered why she remained so intent on making the figurines until I learned what they really were. Then I had been thankful. If not for her little figurines, Nik might have defeated us.

Devan tucked the figurine into her pocket and wiped her hands on her jeans. They were faded and had rips across the knees, no longer the style, but I suspected she’d picked them up at the thrift store, sort of like the T-shirt she wore with an inverted pyramid on it. Any lettering that had once been on the shirt was long since gone.

“I’ve told you about those my father holds.”

“Yeah. That’s the reason the Druist will be your hubby.”

She glared at me. “Don’t say it like you don’t care.”

I flopped on the ground to sit beside her. I took her hand and squeezed. Her skin felt warm and tingled where I touched. Even in the musty space of the lower level of the shed, she smelled like grasses and flowers, sort of like I remembered spring in Conlin smelling.

“You know I do. How did the Druist take them, anyway?”

Devan shook her head. “My father never spoke of it. Something happened, and they were gone.”

I glanced to where Nik sat on the shelf. He had gone to the Druist Mage, but there wouldn’t have been any way for Nik to have reached her father’s warded rooms. I had been the one to seal part of the room, and Nik hadn’t had the same skill with arcane patterns back then as he displayed recently. He wouldn’t have been able to get through.

“Not Nik,” Devan agreed. “As far as I can tell, it happened years ago. My betrothal to the Mage has been out there for a while.”

I squeezed her hand. It bothered Devan that her father would use her like he did. That was the reason for the betrothal. She was meant as a trade: Devan for the Trelking’s little toys. Only, they weren’t really little toys, they were prisoners, much like the ones my father kept trapped here.

“What if the ones here are not what we think?” I asked. “I mean, we assume they’re the same as what your father keeps, but what if they’re not?”

“Adazi wanted one of them badly enough to make a play for it here. I think that tells us all we need to know about what kinds of beings we’re dealing with,” she said.

I studied the figurines along the shelf. The samurai was the only one that looked anything like someone we’d find on this side of the Threshold, well, other than Nik. There was one that looked like a stack of rocks with arms. Another looked something like a roach. I didn’t want to imagine what it might be like when fully animated. What kind of power had it had? There was another with long pincers for arms, but a somewhat humanoid head. If all of them were really alive, only held in some sort of magical suspended animation, then I didn’t really want to see any of them out of their current state.

“I’m really going to need to work with him,” I said softly.

Devan turned toward me. Her skin took on the soft glow that it did when she pulled on her magic. The medallion I wore around my neck went cool at the same time, her way of telling me when she used her power, as if the light coming out of her flesh wasn’t enough.

“I know you do.”

“It’s the only thing I can think of that will help. We’ve been in Conlin for what? Three months now? And what have I learned?”

Devan punched me in the shoulder. “You’re an idiot, you know that, Ollie?”

“You keep telling me that.”

“What have you learned? Let’s see, only that you can reproduce patterns made by the Elder. That you can create devices of power just like the Elder. That there are shifters living in Conlin. And you’ve stopped a shifter painter and mage apprentice. So it’s not exactly like you’ve been sitting back on your ass since we’ve been here.”

I laughed. Hearing her say it like that did make it sound a little more impressive. “We came here to learn from my father’s work, to learn what it would take to keep you alive, but doesn’t it seem like the more we learn, the deeper we’re getting into something more than simply the Elder?”

Devan’s face clouded slightly and she nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. What are the chances that Conlin is the center of all this activity? Given everything we’ve come across, how likely do you think it is that my father actually
wanted
us to get here?”

That had been my fear, as well, but hearing it from Devan made the concern that much more real. Her father was one of the Te’alan, beings of great power, but her father was more than that. He was the Trelking. With power and magic greater than anything I could imagine, he also possessed the gift of prescience, the ability to see potential futures. Nothing was fully set, at least he had claimed that nothing was ever really set when I once asked him, but there were pathways that he preferred to nudge the future to follow. I’d never fully shaken the idea that the Trelking knew
about what we planned, and that it fit somehow into
his
plans.

“So what now?” I asked.

Devan leaned against me. In the ten years that we’d known each other, it felt both strange and fantastic to have her this close to me. More than that, it felt right. I’d never allowed myself to view her as anything more than a friend. Partly because I knew what her father would do to me if he learned that I did. Better to die a different way than to face the full wrath of the Trelking. Partly, it was fear of ruining our friendship. Devan had been the first person I met when I crossed the Threshold ten years ago. Now that we were on this side, it had taken nearly losing her twice for me to realize what an idiot I’d actually been. Devan had known all along.