Chapter 42. The Conspice?!
“Isn’t this invigorating!” Jextor shouted, hands on his waist. His voice boomed, echoing back from the mountains surrounding us. “Observe the majestic tranquility!”
A slab of snow broke off from the side of the mountain opposite us. The snow slid down, collecting more and building up into an avalanche. The sound was deafening, making my teeth rattle. Grit clapped her hands over her ears.
Jextor swiped his hand at the roiling snow. On the mountain’s side sat a massive grey boulder with dark holes in it, revealed by the snow rolling off it. “Look! That one looks a bit like a skull! Hah, it would—“
Falar flicked a hand. One of the skeletons smacked Jextor on the back of his head.
“Ouch,” he said, rubbing the smacked area.
The skeleton stepped back, crossing its arms over its ribcage and glaring at the chancellor with its empty eye sockets.
“Must be one of yours,” Jextor muttered.
“Enough,” Falar said. The avalanche covered everything in a thick fog of snow, soft powder everywhere in the air. “We will camp here. I will scout ahead and make sure the path forward is stable. No more shouting.”
Jextor harrumphed and wiped the melting snow from his face. “We will build the camp. I bet our delicate students are tired after a long day’s journey!”
“You’re the one who’s been trudging through waist-high snow,” I said, breathing hard. Grit and I had walked in the middle of all the skeletons, on a path trampled flat by everyone else. My legs still ached and my neck and shoulders were sore from tensing against the cold for the whole day, but I wouldn’t let him get away with calling me delicate. “Why do you even do it? You could just walk with the rest of us.”
“And miss the exercise? Never,” he said. Then his face turned serious, and he lifted his head to sniff the air. “Besides, it’s more difficult to locate the power trickling our way if I’m too close to all these undead and the gear we’re carrying. Especially the Conspice muddles things.”
Grit sniffed a couple of times as well. “You can actually smell where we’re going? That’s why we have been changing directions?”
“There’s death in the air, but smelling it isn’t enough,” Jextor said, tapping his nose. “A malus hangs on these mountains. Shifting through the murk takes intuition and practice!”
I stood with my mouth open, breath stuck in my throat. The thing that had started all of this. The aching in my brain that had felt familiar. The shackle had dampened the feeling, but now that he said it, it was obvious. “The… the Conspice? Where is that thing? Why did you bring it?”
Jextor shrugged. “In one box or another. It’s an observational tool, after all. Don’t nick it again,” he said, wagging a sausage-sized finger at me.
“You stole it?” Grit asked.
“A bit,” I said, glaring at Jextor.
“Now! Let me get the undead started. The zombies need to be thawed before they freeze completely and the skeletons need extra instructions to pitch the tents. It’s not part of their usual duties, believe it or not.” Jextor started swiping lines into the air, thick bands of mana that blazed hot and blue against the darkness.
“The hook goes too much to the left,” I said.
“Huh?” Jextor said, continuing to draw. “Ah, recognized the fire rune? Not an easy skill to read runes from the air!”
“The hook goes too much to the left,” I repeated.
He laughed, and the runes lit up. Power pulsed through them and a carpet of fire roared across the ground, vaporizing the snow and ice. Grit screamed. The wind blew away the cloud of steam, but not before it made me damp. I shivered as the cold set in immediately.
The fire had revealed a large area of reasonably flat stone. Space enough for two tents and for the undead to huddle together and not get buried during the night.
Jextor patted his sleeve that had caught on fire. “Hook, curves. It’s not all that exact.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked. “I thought it was.”
“It is,” Grit said.
“Nonsense!” Jextor shouted. “Believe in yourself and you can do whatever you want!”
“That makes no sense!” I howled at him. “Even I know that,” I added in a quieter voice.
Grit patted me on the back.
“You have much to learn about magic,” Jextor said. “Let me establish the camp and I will teach you.”
“No killing anyone,” Grit said.
“No burning anything,” I said.
“You two are worse than Falar,” Jextor muttered.
Jextor started by making the skeletons pitch one of the tents for Grit and me to get inside. The tent quieted the sound of the wind and it was already warm inside when I stepped in. It was the merchant’s tent, large and square with a post in each corner. The zombies had hammered the metal spikes directly into the stone of the mountain.
I patted the cloth and the whole tent thrummed. “Guess the enchantments were solid enough, after all.”
“You really could see he drew the rune wrong?” Grit asked.
“I watched Fek try to do it enough. I got experience. And Ferne said the hook is the thing she gets wrong if she tries to go too fast.”
“He was going pretty fast,” Grit said, holding open the flap for the skeletons.
They brought in bed rolls, a carpet, and a box filled with only candles. Seemed a tent kicked up on the side of a mountain would be more comfy than anything I slept in back in Tenorsbridge. The two skeletons carrying our satchels stepped in last and put them down on the unrolled beds. One patted my satchel carefully, as if making sure it sat comfortably next to my pillow.
I shivered, still damp from the steam. I pulled off the coat and hung it on a line hanging near the ceiling of the tent. My hand touched the stiff rectangle of the envelope through the coat’s pocket and I paused. The coat was dry on the inside. The letter would be fine, and could stay in the pocket for now. I yawned and rubbed at my face with both hands. “Think he will be busy for a while? I’m going to wrap up and try to get warm again. Wake me once he’s ready.”
“You think you’d sleep through the Chancellor being ready?”
Good point. I pulled the robe over my head. The floor of the tent was cloth, as warm as the walls, so I let the robe fall in a heap next to the bed. I pulled the cover up to my chin. My whole body ached, but I was used to that. The pain in my head was tiring me out. It never got bad enough to stop me, but it didn’t let up either.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I hadn’t slept anywhere except the dorm room for a long while.
The porcelain thing pushed toward me through the darkness. Everything smelled of smoke, but there was nothing anywhere. Fire crackled and somewhere behind the darkness people were screaming and shouting. My mom’s voice called my name quietly, in a gasp.
“What is this?” I whispered. This was wrong. I didn’t want to be here.
The thing was nothing like the Academy skeletons. They were normal, all alike. This thing was whiter than snow, featureless. The skull wasn’t like real skulls, with the cracks and the lines they were supposed to have, but more like a drawing. An idea of a skull.
The thing reached out a hand, made of jagged edges of white bone. It kept coming closer and getting larger. Its palm was as large as my torso, even when it didn’t really have a palm, only bones. Falar’s ward crackled around me, sparking and spitting angrily.
“Grit,” I murmured.
The thing leaned forward, and kept getting larger. I could have walked into its eye socket. It hissed at me, a whisper filtered through layers of magic. Its claws twitched around me, and it scraped a thumb as large as me across the wards hovering between us, like it was caressing me.
“YOU,” it said.
I shouted, bouncing up. The stench of mold was suffocating and I gasped for air.
Grit yelped and shot up from her bed. “Lina! What is it?”
I shook my head, panting. The thing had spoken. It had seen me. It had spoken directly to me. Before it had only hissed and even that hadn’t happened for a long time. I touched my neck, trying to feel the ward. Even without quieting my mind, it was still there, tingling at my fingertips.
Jextor and Falar burst into the tent, stumbling over each other.
“What was that?” Jextor shouted.
Falar was crouched low, eyes narrowed, gaze sweeping the tent.
Grit squeaked and pulled the cover up to her chin.
Falar straightened, wrinkling his nose at Jextor. “I would blame you for alarming everyone for nothing, but even I felt it. It reached for us.” He drew some runes into the air, much more complicated than any I had seen. The way he did it was infuriatingly precise, with the smallest possible movements, the edges of the symbols exact. “I will… what? Why do you… stop that!”
Jextor kept tugging on his robe, pulling Falar towards the door. “We’ll let the students dress properly. Meet us in our tent, you two.”
“No, no, let him finish,” Grit muttered from behind her cover.
“Out!” I shouted.
Falar tried to keep drawing runes even as Jextor wrapped his arms around him. He lifted him up into the air, carrying him out of the tent. Falar stayed tense like a plank, hand outstretched and drawing a squiggly line as he was hauled off.
The thicket of runes stayed floating in the air. It rippled and started to pull apart, darkness blotting out the glowing lines.
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