Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) (12 page)

Nothing had changed since.

And meanwhile, the fruitless search was taking its toll. Already infinitesimal, the council’s patience for ‘her’ Blood wizards was dwindling rapidly toward nonexistence. Of them all, only Darius maintained any determination to do as she’d asked, though lately even he’d begun to look concerned. Her attempts to initiate discussions of her going out to help had been resounding failures, however. They’d made a deal. And she was needed here.

So the days crept by. In the morning, she studied her father’s files, pouring through years of handwritten notes and cross-references. In short order, she’d discovered that when Cornelius said the library consisted of remnants, he’d made the understatement of the century. Even her father’s journals lamented the lack of information he’d constantly encountered. Pages ended in midsentence, with the next page nowhere to be found, and countless records mentioned other books no one could remember seeing.

It was maddening.

By early afternoon, Cornelius rescued her from the stacks of notebooks, though only to deliver her to their training area and then drive her till she thought she’d scream. Initially, it hadn’t been so bad. Basic defensive techniques, baby steps, and talk of how magic worked dominated their time. But soon, he’d started her on offensive tactics, insisting she learn to accomplish by design what she’d thus far pulled off only by instinct. Hours of maneuvering through physically and magically demanding obstacle courses followed, as well as entire sessions spent trying to bind more than one wizard simultaneously. The guards were her guinea pigs, and their avowed trust in her ability to unbind them once finished was only occasionally belied by the hints of anxiety she saw in their eyes.

She’d struggled at the start, trying to remember how she’d taken Brogan’s magic away. The whole night was a blur, and recreating what she’d done meant revisiting memories she’d rather forget. But slowly, it came back to her, and now Cornelius steadily worked more and more wizard attackers into their sessions, expecting her to bind them without fail every single time.

It was good training, she supposed. But it helped nothing toward the spell. No matter how hard she pushed herself or what she read, taking magic from multiple wizards at the exact same time remained beyond her reach. She could bind one, and then another and another, and keep them all bound till she wanted to let them go, or even take the magic of one and use it against another, but simultaneous binding required more strength than she knew how to find.

And that was the problem really, though she hadn’t discussed it with Cornelius. Strong she might be – likely stronger than most of the wizards here, if her father’s notes on her general family history were any indication – but even for her there remained a point she couldn’t exceed.

She’d discovered it soon after they started their lessons. At the beginning, the practice had been so liberating. Their training building was a massive concrete-walled space with only a semblance of a roof to worry about, and for their part, the guards and Cornelius were so accustomed to defending against magical assaults that, for the first time, she could let the fire go and trust that everyone would be okay. But as the intensity of their practice escalated, things changed. One moment, she’d been pushing herself harder and harder, trying desperately to snare the magic of two wizards at once, and the next she’d been on her knees, gasping as her magic faltered at the edge of a great cavernous gulf in her mind.

In the days that followed, she’d taken to calling it the black hole, though ‘abyss’ would have been equally fitting. Like a cliff at the end of the world, the void demarcated the nonnegotiable point beyond which her magic absolutely could not go.

From her father’s journals, she’d pieced together information, learning what she could of the ‘limit’ he occasionally described. The human body only possessed so much capacity for magic, he wrote, beyond which the mind would simply break. Most wizards never came close to this, but with her family’s history of strength, for them the situation was not the same. At the start of the war, he’d tried to push beyond it for the sake of the spell, but the attempts left him unconscious for days and frightened the council into thinking he’d been permanently incapacitated. Eventually, when months of trying left the limit unchanged, he’d given up and clung to the hope that strength alone had not been the sole factor in what Merlin had done.

She’d danced close to the edge since reading his words, but never pushed past it. Sooner or later, she knew she probably would, but until her skill with magic improved, she wasn’t sure it would go particularly well. At best, she’d be knocked unconscious. At worst, she’d be a vegetable.

And thus, she kept training. No matter how infuriating Cornelius could be.

“Go again,” he called. At his command, the guards scattered to search for hiding places. Scorch marks covered the maze of cinder-block barricades and showed in multilayered swaths across the walls. Of the fabric and hay dummies, only piles of smoldering ash remained.

“No flames this time,” he told her. “Only force. Stop resorting to pyromachy just because it makes you the most comfortable.”

She scowled and then turned away to give the guards a chance to hide.

“Go!”

Sometimes, the hours among the books almost seemed appealing.

The sun rested heavily on the horizon when Cornelius finally signaled the end of their training and ordered the guards back to the factory. Sinking down onto a pile of cinder blocks, Ashe released their magic with a twist of her power and then dropped her head into her hands as the men filed out of the building.

Every muscle in her body ached. She wondered if she’d be able to move tomorrow.

“Not bad,” Cornelius said, lowering himself down beside her.

She didn’t bother to look up.

“I have asked Elias to begin teaching you about portals this evening,” he continued. “They are his forte, and thus he is best suited to teach them to you. He should be here soon.”

Her gaze went to him incredulously. “I’m about to fall over, Cornelius. Can it wait?”

The man grimaced.

“Please?” she tried.

“As you wish, your majesty.”

She drew a breath and then let it out in a sigh. Over the past weeks, she’d often marveled at the bizarrely mixed role of dictator and subordinate Cornelius played. In matters of training, he drove her mercilessly, only to switch back to unflappable deference the moment their lessons were done. If she hadn’t known better, she’d almost have thought he
was
insane.

The storage building door swung open and she looked over tiredly as Elias walked in. Surveying the damage, the familiar hint of humor twitched his expression.

“Love what you’ve done with the place, your highness,” he commented.

She gave him a flat look before focusing her attention on stretching her cramping shoulder.

“Her majesty wishes to start portal training tomorrow,” Cornelius said.

“That’s fine,” Elias replied as he crossed the room. “I actually just came to let you know we’ve found a few cripples.”

Freezing in mid-motion, Ashe stared at him.

“They’re willing to help us,” he continued, “and claim to have encountered your Blood wizards as well. They’re on their way here now.”

She hesitated. “Did you get their names?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, no. But I can take you to meet them, if you’d like. Provided you’re both done, that is?”

Cornelius nodded, but she’d already risen to her feet.

“Where?” she asked.

“The old loading bays.”

Elias had to hurry to catch her.

The loading bay entrance was opening as she reached the top of the stairs leading from the factory to the bay floor. Eyes locked on the door, she stopped, her hands gripping the metal guardrail.

Led by two wizards, an old woman and a teenage boy edged into the room. Watching the area around them nervously, the cripples clung to each other and hung back from the wizards.

The door closed.

“Are those the only ones?” Ashe asked, her voice tight.

“Yeah,” Elias said. He glanced to her, his brow furrowing. “You okay?”

She didn’t answer, not taking her eyes from the unfamiliar pair. Swallowing dryly, she pushed away from the guardrail and headed down the stairs.

The caution on the cripples’ faces grew as she approached them over the length of the loading bay. Stepping to either side of the pair, the guards regarded the empty space in front of them and bowed their heads as she came near.

She ignored them.

“Hi,” she said to the cripples, trying to appear nonthreatening. “I’m Ashe.”

Behind her, Elias coughed.

An urge to scowl hit her and she fought it, not wanting to frighten the old woman and boy just because the wizards were uncomfortable with the familiarity she was showing.

“The Queen of Merlin,” Elias amended politely.

The old woman blinked.

“I just wanted to thank you for coming,” Ashe pressed on.

Cagily, the woman studied her. “They said you believed us about the Blood.”

Ashe nodded. “They killed my family.”

The teenager looked to the old woman, desperate hope in his eyes, while the woman’s hand tightened on the boy’s own, caution still in her gaze.

“They didn’t mention that,” the old woman allowed.

Ashe kept from looking at the others. “They don’t like to spread it around.”

“We had to take the chance,” the woman continued, her tone almost daring Ashe to challenge her. “We had to try to stop them. They killed his mother. My daughter. Like she was nothing. So we just… we needed to…”

She trailed off, unable to go farther.

“We will,” Ashe said.

Nodding angrily, the old woman looked away, resolve steeling her expression.

“We have some space set aside for you,” Elias said after a moment passed. “Away from the wizards.”

Her expression unchanged, the old woman nodded again. Her gaze went back to Ashe. “Thank you.”

Uncertain what to say, Ashe nodded as well. “You too.”

She watched as the guards led the pair toward the steps.

“You want to go out there with them, don’t you?” Elias asked.

She didn’t answer.

“It’s not safe, your majesty. If–”

“I know,” she said sharply. Grimacing, she forced the frustration down. They were here. It was a beginning.

And that had to be enough.

“I know,” she repeated more quietly.

Taking a breath, she turned and walked away.

*****

He’d dug through leads to come up with nothing, and poured over newspaper articles with equal lack of success. He’d talked to reporters who’d eventually stopped answering his calls, and surfed the internet till he thought his laptop would break.

And four weeks after his visit to the morgue to see the body of her accomplice, he still had nothing to show for his efforts.

Harris wished he could convince himself that after so long of searching for Ashley and her sister, he’d become accustomed to the frustration, but he knew it would ring a lie. The dearth of progress was infuriating, and when it finally became shoot something for the hell of it or move on, he’d decided to do what all good detectives did when the trail ran cold.

Go back to the beginning.

He’d avoided Monfort, and all of Utah for good measure, on his journey back. There weren’t any answers there, but there were plenty of people with questions he didn’t care to engage. In her typical, conscientious way, Malden’s wife, Rhianne, had kept him apprised of everything, though he’d yet to answer a single one of her emails. Scott was due to start physical therapy soon, and the plastic surgeons were hopeful they could restore at least a semblance of normalcy to his face. The kids were doing well, all things considered, though Nicole’s grades were suffering and Andrew had gotten in a few fights. Meanwhile, the department kept checking to see if she’d heard from Harris, as they’d received word he’d taken some new work during his leave and they wanted to follow up with him about it.

She put it so mildly, but he could read between the lines. And stay the hell away as a result.

Annoying as it was, though, the department being after him didn’t really matter. He didn’t need to go back to Monfort because, as many lives as Ashley had destroyed there, that city was only part of the story. Everything was only part of the story.

This was the beginning.

The weeks hadn’t been kind to the ruins of the farmhouse. Soaked by rain and baked by the sun, the blackened boards were warped and yellow tatters of crime scene tape still hung in several places, fluttering in the early summer breeze. A hole gaped near the edge of the ruins, marking where the firemen had extracted the bodies from the basement, such as they were. Charred corpses without a shred of identification, not much of use was found on anything or anyone inside the wreckage.

And the same could be said for the whole situation, really. Since arriving in the state a few days before, he’d practically lived in libraries and county clerk’s offices, digging through everything from musty paper records to electronically scanned files, with little to show for it. Paid for in full eight years ago by a small company that’d since gone bankrupt, the house’s bills had been accounted for by automated transactions from a network of shell accounts, more small companies, and general confusion. The deed and utilities all listed people of whom he could find no trace, and who – he was starting to suspect – never had existed at all.

He grimaced. Like everything else with this girl, the mere concept of a discernible trail was starting to seem like a joke. There was no pattern, no thread connecting anything. Each location in which she’d left her mark was as unrelated to the others as kangaroos were to cowboys.

A clink sounded by his foot and he glanced down to see the sun-faded pipes of a broken wind chime lying in the grass. His mouth tightened as he nudged them with his shoe. If he was honest, he hadn’t really expected to find some grand clue to her whereabouts in the ruins of her farmhouse. He’d just wanted to see the place, rather than merely look at photos online. And if, somewhere inside himself, he’d hoped the sight of the girls’ home would bring him closer to understanding what’d prompted a teenager to massacre her whole family… well, that was forgivable.