Twenty Palaces (10 page)

I wandered for at least ten minutes before finding a sign with a map of the campus. Five minutes later, I had breezed through the security gates at the university library. Rows of bookshelves dominated the edges of the room, while a nest of desks and tables clustered by the windows in the corners. The students at the tables seemed to be falling over each other as they worked together. I didn't look at them too closely.

A sign indicated that the third floor was for silent, private study. That's what I wanted. I climbed the long, open stairway past the students packed like sardines around computer terminals on the second floor. No one challenged me or asked to see ID.
 

The third floor was a mirror image of the first, except that the tables had been replaced with cubicles. A sign at the top of the stairs urged me to study quietly. Glad to.
 

First, I went into the men's room. There was a nice resting spot on a shelf by the sinks. I squirted hand soap onto my jacket and began to wash it under the spigot. This wasn't the place to smell like a street bum.
 

When the jacket was clean, I rung it out. I grabbed my envelope off the shelf and noticed a cheap ball point pen sitting behind it. There was no one else in the bathroom, so I decided it was lost property and claimed it.

At the information desk, I smiled at an old hippy as I took a short stack of scrap paper. The hippy didn't seem to mind. Each was about the size of my hand--larger than I'd expected, but that was a good thing.

The cubicles were all taken, but I found a small empty table in the corner. I sat, the scrap paper under my right hand and the envelope under my left. The clock on the wall read forty minutes after one. I could spare an hour and a half looking over the book before I had to go to work but I was sure it wouldn't take that much time. It was barely 60 pages long.

If I was still going to work. If Callin's bit had told them where I lived, he probably knew where I worked.

It was too late to sweat that now. Once I knew what was in the book, I could share it with Jon. Then I could do whatever I had to do--skip town, face down the cops, whatever.

I opened to the first page. Written at the top was:
To Look Into the Empty Spaces and See the Great Predators
Whatever the hell that meant.

Two weird but simple designs had been drawn on the bottom of the page. Each was similar to Annalise's tattoos or the stitches of Callin's waistcoat. The design on the left was labeled
1
and the other was
2.

I wasn't looking for something that would let me "see." I needed a way to fight Callin and Annalise. For Jon.

I needed a weapon. The fact that I wanted power to help my friend didn't change the fact that it was power I was after. Seeing the world behind the world wasn't enough, and having Callin offer to give it to me in his way wasn't enough, either--I wanted to own a piece of it. I wanted to
take
it.

I turned the page.
A Gift of Tongues,
was written at the top. This page also had two designs.

Next page:
A Path Through the Wilderness.
Below, two designs.

Next page:
The Shadow Walks Free.

Next page:
Golem Flesh.
That was more like it. The note below the title read:
To harden the flesh.
This was some kind of protection spell.

I studied the designs at the bottom of the page. Beside them was a small stack of five lines with musical notes on them. I couldn't read music. Reluctantly, I turned the page.

The Unwinding Spectre.
Callin's description was simple.
To Undo An Enemy And His Works.
Okay. Whatever that meant. I turned the page.
 

Ghost Knife.

"Hello," I said aloud, forgetting I was in a library. The note read:
To cut ghosts, magic and dead things.

That was the one. I bookmarked the spell with a sheet of note paper and turned the page. Then the next. I needed something that sounded protective.

The handwriting changed partway through the book, then it changed again. More than one person had put this together. Even if one of the others was Annalise, that meant there was at least a third person in their society.
 

I reached a page that had the words
Steeled Glass
at the top. The designs beneath it were very simple. The notation read:
To Protect Against a Single Blow.

I slipped another bookmark into this page.
 

The steeled glass spell looked so simple I considered starting with it, but hell, the ghost knife sounded cooler. I flipped back to that bookmarked page.
 

The designs under the ghost knife were side by side. The only other notes on the page beside the one I'd already read were a tiny scribble marking design number one as
For the mind.
Design number two was marked
For the hand.
 

Whatever the hell that meant.
 

I copied design number two onto a sheet of scrap paper, but there was nothing special about it when I was done. It looked like Annalise's tattoos and Callin's waistcoat designs, but there was no magic in it as far as I could tell.

I drew both designs beside each other, which had the same disappointing result. Next, I drew design two directly over design one. Nothing. I switched the order. Nothing again. I suspected that was not the right method anyway; the resulting glyphs didn't look like Annalise's tattoos or Callin's stitches. Too busy.
 

If this crap was easy, everyone would do it. I focused in on the pages again, skimming the first and last sheets in the hope of finding some kind of instructions. If Callin and Annalise could do it, so could I. They hadn't exactly struck me as geniuses.

Unless the book alone wasn't enough. Maybe I needed a magical pen to write it out, or a special decoder ring for the designs. Maybe I was supposed to be wearing enchanted underwear.
 

Whatever. I didn't have anything but the book to work with. Besides, Callin had locked up the book and the book alone. If he needed a magic pen to cast a spell--or a magic embroidery needle--he'd have locked them up together, wouldn't he? I wished I had kept the slipcover so I could search it for secret pockets or hidden instructions.
 

I looked at the words on the page again. Maybe they held some secret significance. I studied them closely, then held them up to the light. If there had been watermarks or faint scribbles on the pages of Callin's book, the copier hadn't picked them up. They were just words. I flipped to the spell before this one and the spell after it. The numbers were not in the same position relative to the design in the spell before, but they were in the spell after.
 

Okay. The numbers don't matter either. Probably. There was nothing to do but look at the designs again.
 

Dammit. It didn't make sense. I organized the scrap papers on the table, then laid my pen against the copy I'd made of design number one. These curved lines could be an eye, if I added a line here and here.

Something clicked. I looked at the original design again, then closed my eyes. The shape of the drawing stood out in the darkness of my mind's eye. Yep, that one looked like a rough drawing of an eye. And those lines could almost be an image of a knife. And was that elaborate squiggle right there a clawed hand, reaching for the knife's handle?

Suddenly, the image in my mind flashed white and burst into flame.
 

A bloom of ghostly fire erupted inside my head and quickly spread to my entire body.

CHAPTER NINE

I jolted in my chair, frozen with pain. Flames raced down my body. My heart was on fire. My guts were on fire. Tongues of flame erupted from my mouth and nostrils. My blood must have been boiling....

But at the same time, a deep animal part of my brain knew, even through the pain, that this fire was not real, physical fire. It wasn't really boiling my blood. My mind was burning. My soul was burning. The flame was killing me, but it wasn't touching me physically.

I snatched up the pen and set it on a piece of blank scrap. I moved it slightly, making a tiny little comma of ink, and I felt the fire flow down my arm, through the pen into the paper. I kept the pen moving, carefully reproducing the second design. "For the hand."
 

The pain overwhelmed me. Spectral flames roared around my face. Every muscle in my body was clenched at once, and I would have screamed if I could have taken a breath. But on some level I knew that if I stopped this second drawing, or if I made a mistake, the fire flowing out of my would be blocked, and come backwards out of the page. It would destroy me before I had a chance to try again.

I kept going, slowly copying the glyph, willing my writing hand not to tremble or spasm. The symbols in my mind: eye, hand, blade, glowed brighter as the fire left me, and it almost became like sharing someone else's thought, as though I had touched another mind out in the universe somewhere and we were thinking this thought and writing it out together.

I drew the last squiggle and the rest of the fire rushed out of me.

I gasped, taking shuddering breaths and letting the pen fall from my hand and roll off the table. Tears and sweat streamed down my face. I held my arms away from my body so I could be touching nothing at all.
 

But my clothes weren't burned. There were no scorch marks on the table, no curled blackened edges on the papers around me. More importantly, the pain was receding. I knew that wouldn't happen with a real burn.
 

I'd been right. The fire hadn't been physical. Thank God thank god thank god.
 

I noticed a young woman glaring at me like I was a nutcase. Since she was giving me a nasty look rather than spraying me with a fire extinguisher, I knew she hadn't seen the flames at all. I was the only one who could.

Okay. Magical fire.
 

It was remarkable, really, how quickly I'd gone from not even wanting to think the word "magic" to this.
 

I took a deep, calming breath, although it didn't do me much good. I was damn lucky not to be dead, or at least being loaded into an ambulance. Not to mention that fire doesn't burn without fuel. Had I torched away some part of my body I didn't know about? Had I burned up part of my soul?

I looked at the scrap paper but didn't dare touch it yet. There was my mark, and it held power. I could feel it humming from two feet away.

A strong hand gripped my shoulder. "You have to come with me, young fella."

A campus security guard stood over me. He was about forty-five and his face had the scarred, rounded look of a lifetime of hard fighting. I'd seen plenty of faces like it among the older inmates. Out of habit, I glanced down at his hip. Yep, he was wearing a gun.

I was still dazzled by pain and magic, and apparently wasn't moving fast enough, because the guard took my arm in one hand and lifted me. With his other hand, he reached for the scrap papers. Including the ghost knife.

"No!" I lunged for the spell, snatching it away just as he was about to grab it. The paper curled as I yanked it back, and the corner struck the guard's hand.

It passed through him as if he wasn't there. The corner hit just between the man's index and middle knuckles, then slide back toward the wrist. The white corner of the paper peaked over the top of his skin like a tiny shark fin speeding through calm water. The paper struck the man's watch, then it emerged from his arm.
 

His watch fell off his wrist and bounced away on the carpet. He stumbled and caught himself against the table, then stared at the spot on his hand where the ghost knife had cut through him.
 

His flesh was completely unmarked.
 

"Lordy," he said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have grabbed at your things like that."

For a moment, I was utterly stunned by this sudden change. Power emanated from the piece of paper in my hand like a live wire. I slid it gently it into my pocket.
 

"Are you okay?"

"I think so," the guard said. "You're working here, right? You don't have to go. I'm sorry I said you should. It ain't necessary."

"Well, okay." I didn't know how to respond to that. "I'll stay here and keep doing my thing."
 

"Let me know if you need anything," the guard said. He turned and shuffled away.
 

What was going on? What had I just done to him? I touched the front of my jacket and shirt, remembering the feel of greasy ashes from last night.

Screw this. I followed him. "Hey, maybe you should see a doctor or something."

"That's okay, thank you. Don't trouble yourself. Sorry to bother you." The guard kept moving away and I trailed behind him.

A second guard approached. This one looked like someone's fat grandfather. "What's going on here?"

"This man nearly collapsed," I said quickly. "I told him he should see a doctor or something, but...."

Fat Grandpa nodded and took the other man's arm, stepping forward in a way that forced me to back off. The two guards started toward the elevator, talking in low tones.

I watched them enter the elevator. When the doors closed no one had fallen over dead.

I went back to the table, took the scrap paper from my pocket and smoothed it out. I could feel the magic in it. Annalise's ribbon had not been like this. Maybe spells feel strongest to the person who created it? I had no way to know.
 

Did Callin's waistcoat, which was covered with sigils, feel like this, times twenty? Did Annalise's entire body feel like this times a hundred? It boggled my mind to think they were surrounded by this kind of power all the time.

And now I had my little piece of it. Mine.

But I had to be more careful. I'd just accidentally used my spell against the security guard and I didn't really know what I'd done. What if he'd just had a stroke?
 

Or maybe I'd only cut the man's "ghost"--his soul or spirit or something. Maybe it wasn't dangerous at all, like a magical stun gun. I liked that idea so much that I decided to believe it.