Chasing Bloodlines (Book 4) (8 page)

Chapter 8

A crowd had gathered to watch, wrapped in their cloaks and scarves against the chilling morning air. Mikelle observed as Gabriel composed himself in his familiar ways, straightening and set his gaze ahead. He preferred to train alone, but he knew it was better for people to watch. Castle Jaden needed to know how truly powerful their Head Mage was, and Gabriel needed to be prepared for a crowd during his battle with the Arch Mages. He broke into a run down one of the reservoir’s docks and jumped feet first into the icy water.

The water
bent
around him in a cylindrical arc and he landed on one foot precariously balanced on seemingly nothing. His hands moved fast with a net of blue strings as he set the other foot down on the surface of the water. It suddenly encompassed his legs in a swirling froth, rising out of the water, and a column of water took him skyward.

He towered above them held only by the spiraling water. It cut from under him, falling into the reservoir as he followed. He hit the water on his back, but rather than sinking with a splash, the water rippled like gelatin and shot him back up.

Mikelle had never seen anything like it. No one had, not for Ages. She had seen a dozen yellowed papers strewn across his desk detailing immensely complicated patterns in Water, Fire and Earth, and a week later he was dazzling Mages with his capabilities. The last Class Ten had been born 900 years before, and not since those days had anyone been able to handle the patterns Gabriel threaded so casually.

He hit the water on his feet, wavering only for a moment. The gelatin rippled, and Gabriel ran across it, skidding to use motion of the ripple as it spun him in an arc and ran back the other way.

“Whatever you are teaching him seems to be working, Malain,” Mikelle said as she stepped up to the tall Mage in a short coat of dark purple striped in black.

He looked down with a kind smile. “I can take no credit. We did not create these patterns.” He and Gabriel had spent tireless hours together when possible trying to create new patterns, but as it was with Creators, the instinct to meld new patterns usually only came when needed, not when wished for.

Gabriel stopped running and raised both hands, pulling water up around him in a sphere. He plunged beneath the surface and vanished from the crowd’s eyes.

“I thought only Air Mages could manipulate air under water,” Mikelle murmured.

“We thought a lot of thing we were misinformed about. He controls the water around the air.”

The water steamed and rose, casting a foggy mist in a slowly rotating circle. Mikelle could just see the faint outline of a man in the center when the water suddenly froze and a spire of ice rocketed upwards, higher than Mikelle had ever seen ice manipulated. Gabriel stood on top, his arms folded as he surveyed the view from such a height, and he took a single step off. Someone in the crowd screamed as he suspended himself on seemingly nothing, but he rapidly descended as if running down the stairs, yet all the crowd could see was faint mist.

The water beneath him frothed and boiled as he rushed towards it. The ice spire fell behind him, and he took a leaping jump directly into the heat face first. Spreading his arms, he came within a foot of the boiling water before the steam caught him and pushed him up a few more feet. Carefully, he moved his hands slowly to lay the next patterns and not reduce his surface area. He rapidly flung a hand down to catch himself, and the boiling water instantly turned to ice, freezing in exploding boils and splashes. The crowd murmured between themselves since a rapid deceleration in temperature like that was absolutely unheard of.

He turned his head away coughing and spat into the water. Anyone in the crowd would think nothing of it, but Mikelle knew it was blood. It had been weeks since his misfired shift misaligned his lungs. He had been coughing up blood whenever he exerted himself ever since. He pushed hard every day to suppress the urge to cough, hoping the lungs would heal where his Mages could not, but the body did not respond, and he continued to bleed.

He stood and dusted his hands off. Each slap created a fracture of ice to sprout away from him as he walked towards the dock. A few people started to clap, but he suddenly turned and fell backwards into the water. This time the liquid consumed him. It lifted him moments later but first coated everything but his eye and nose in a thin layer of ice. Malain instinctively hurled balls of ice at Gabriel, but the balls only cracked and splintered the ice covering him. Some Gabriel absorbed into the ice armor. After seven hits the ice began to chip away, but Gabriel pulled it back and mended the fractures as he walked forward.

Malain finally halted his attack, and Gabriel slipped the ice from him, giving his raven hair a shake. As soon as he set foot on the dock, the crowd raised their voices in cheer. He grinned sheepishly and set patterns to wick the sweat on his brow.

“That was almost the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Mikelle smiled as he walked up.

“Almost?” he inquired with furrowed eyebrows. She stamped a foot and fueled the pattern laced within her cloak. Water underneath the dock shot upwards, completely dousing him. His white shirt clung to him in all the right places, and all his muscles seized at the freezing touch.

“
Now
that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” she grinned. Malain chuckled beside her.

Gabriel wiped a hand down his face. “You’re infuriating.” He pulled the water out of his clothes and shivered.

Malain handed him his cloak, and they walked back down the mountainside to the heart of the castle. The on-looking Mages dispersed back to their lives. The castle was quiet in the heart of winter, keeping most inside. Few trained outside but for the Fire Mages. Most resorted to train within the few sparring rooms carved into the rock beneath the castle. Trade and travelers were sparse this time of year, and it would be for a good four to five weeks before it began to warm slightly.

Gabriel took the lead as always, nodding salutations to those who greeted him in the streets. Mikelle could not help but grin within the hood of her Mage cloak as female Mages watched him pass with sly smiles and whispers. If Gabriel noticed, he never paid attention. His eyes were for one woman only.

“Detour,” he said and slipped into one of the shops with a mug of ale painted on the hanging board above the door.

“Good man,” Malain agreed and joined him with Mikelle not far behind.

The hop house was one of the few places Mages convened during the cold months. A fire always raged in a hearth, the food was always hot, and the drinks were always steaming. The warm room built out of gray stone and dark timber quieted when Gabriel stepped in as did all rooms. When he made no move to interrupt, they returned to their conversations.

“Head Mage,” the rosy-cheeked man behind the counter smiled. “Pleasure to see you in here again. What will you be having?”

Gabriel leaned an elbow on the counter. “Something warm. Cider I think. Malain?”

“Black tea with a shot of whisky.” Malain called above the conversations.

“Mikelle?”

She sighed and leaned over the counter. “I don’t suppose you have Shalabane hot chocolate?”

“For Councilwoman Mikelle I have anything,” the man smiled and pulled out a brick of dark chocolate hidden far back in a drawer.

Mikelle shot a surprised look at Gabriel. He grinned and shrugged.

“I will return these mugs when I have a chance,” Gabriel hefted his drink to the man.

“In good time, Head Mage,” the bartender nodded.

Gabriel took them back out onto the road and headed towards his tower. As much as they would have liked drink in the hearty atmosphere, Gabriel was far too busy.

It had been three weeks since specters inconceivably broke through Jaden’s gates, and Gabriel had spent hours pouring over books to find a pattern to seal them out like the rest of the castle. He suspected Aelony, the specter in the library, knew the pattern but kept it secret, so he would not be trapped within the walls.

Malain broke away with a friendly goodbye and a salute of his drink. Mikelle took up Gabriel’s arm as they walked back to the Lodge through the snow. Paths had been cleared through the courtyard, but the ever-falling snow added more every hour. It seeped into the seams of Mikelle’s boots.

The Lodge was heated by a massive hearth that warmed the foyer and open hallways above. Councilwoman Penny raised a hand as they walked in, deep in conversation with one of her daughters in one of the many couches by the fire.

Gabriel drew Mikelle up to his quarters and pulled her into the study, setting his drink down on his desk.

“I want to try a new pattern, and I’d like someone here to make sure I don’t go awry,” he explained and pushed a chair aside from one of the walls. She took a seat and cupped the hot mug. Gabriel seized Void turning his hair and eyes white.

He laid black threads, pulling them from his chest to twine around his fingers and wrists, and melted into patterns she did not know. She did not understand half the patterns he laid, even some of the Water ones. A faint outline of a door formed on the wall as he moved, and suddenly an image appeared within of a roaring hearth with lavish chairs set around it.

He coughed suddenly as the pattern fueled and turned away to pull a kerchief from a pocket, but Mikelle focused on the image in the wall.

“Is that…the hinge? The door between worlds?”

He nodded and wiped his cheek, stuffing the kerchief back in the pocket. “I think I finally worked it out. Here, put Coal through the door to test first.”

“How dare you risk his life!” she shrieked and looked for the black cat who was nowhere to be seen. “
You
try it.”

He took a deep breath and wiped his brow. The pattern was taxing. He stepped to the door and put his fingers through.

“Where does it lead?” Mikelle asked.

He turned around and grinned before stepping through all the way.

She rushed to it and saw the familiar bright room in Kilkiny Palace, the anteroom to the Queen’s apartments. She slid through without discomfort and looked around, half expecting to split apart or die of heart arrest. Gabriel waited for her grinning as he released Void.

“I’ll have to put a few wards on that door,” he muttered, lapsing into thought as he considered the best ones.

Mikelle sauntered into the Queen’s hallway and rapped on the door at the end. The guard let her in, and Queen Robyn looked up from a conversation with Lady Aisling. They brightened as Mikelle entered.

“Gabriel’s ruined a wall in your anteroom. You might want to see the damage.”

Robyn stood with the slightest of grins, knowing well by now of Mikelle’s flair for the dramatic. Both woman wore opposite shades of green this morning.

“Any word on the specter’s ward?” Aisling asked as she came alongside Mikelle who shook her head.

Gabriel greeted the women as they watched him set black wards around the door. He slipped a blue one around the frame and sank it into Mikelle’s silver ring that surveyed the Water wards, and he sealed several white ones around it.

“There,” he smiled and leaned down to kiss Robyn’s cheek. “You can come and go as you please.” He laid a pattern into her summons ring, “This ring will bend the wards around the door and let you pass. Do not take this off, ever.”

“Gabriel, this is remarkable!” his mother Aisling breathed as she looked through the door.

“I call it a hinge. I’d like to make more, but I fear weakening the castle’s security. Perhaps later,” he trailed off, but Mikelle knew he meant ‘when the Arch Mages are killed’.

“Where did you find this pattern?” Aisling gaped.

“I created it.”

She smiled broadly, immensely proud of her son.

Gabriel frowned slightly at Robyn and put a hand against her forehead. “Are you well? You look a little pale.”

She waved his hand away. “I am fine. Not sleeping as much as usual I suppose.”

“Get your brother to make an herbal mix for you.” His voice was calm, but his face was worried. “I am going to put a door over this hinge, so if anyone wants in or out, please knock. Only those with a ring laced with the proper wards should be able to pull through whomever they like. Until certain threats are eliminated, I would just like Robyn, Lael, and myself to have the rings.”

Aisling nodded in agreement. Mikelle shook her head vehemently.

To their surprise, a ghostly image of a man stepped through the hinge. Robyn shrieked and took a step back, but Gabriel threw up a hand. “It’s fine. This is Aelony, my friend.”

Aelony gave the Head Mage a peculiar look at the term ‘friend’. He was forever garbed in strange-cut clothes from a lost Age. His tied-back hair never grew, his ruggedly-bearded face never changed. “I did not expect to find this door,” he said confusedly with an echoing accent lost to the Ages.

“How is he able to slip through?” Robyn asked with a tone that said ‘this better not happen often’.

“I do not have access to a ward preventing specters.”

“Actually, t’is what I came to see ye about, Head Mage. Forgive me,” he turned to Robyn. “I can see this is Kilkiny. Ye must be the Queen here.”

“This is Queen Robyn Bolt,” Aisling stated.