N ikolai pored over healing texts to no avail. Medea had tasked him with determining which spells she’d used in their last sparring match. One spell, cast three times, had caused him to swell. The other had scarred his face, causing the tissue to regrow excessively when damaged.
Two weeks after his foray into the trench, he was no closer to discovering what she’d used. He’d begun with the most advanced books. There were spells for reattaching limbs, repairing dead tissue, and treating burns. It was, he grudgingly admitted, Useful to know such things. But he could find no offensive spells, nor any spells that could be used offensively.
One night, in a sleepy stupor, he accidentally grabbed a healing book for novices. He almost put it back when he realized his error—laughable to think Medea would use beginner magic in combat, but he sat down with it anyway, flipping through for anything Useful.
And there it was—Blood Rejuvenation. Designed for victims suffering from blood loss, it stimulated the body to produce blood faster. Medea had cast it on him three times, tripling the volume of blood being produced. With no outlet, his body had swollen, causing lightheadedness and a faint heart. She’d stabbed his jugular before he’d passed out to release the pressure.
When the book didn’t yield the second spell, he yanked down several more introductory tomes. At last he found the spell she’d used to scar his face.
In a manual for beginning healers.
In a footnote.
As a cautionary tale on bad spellwork.
On the surface, it was a standard healing spell. When cast upon an open wound, it told the body to build up tissue. The problem was that whoever designed the spell—apparently one of the author’s apprentices—did such a bad job that the spell didn’t take into account whether there was a wound to heal.
Cast upon healthy skin, the tissue multiplied for several minutes. Anything caught in the affected area would overgrow. The author cautioned that the spell could only be used if one were to magically draw out an area of effect first, ensuring the spell stayed within the boundaries and well away from undamaged tissue.
Nikolai leaned back in his chair. Basic spells. He had been laid low by two basic spells. Not only that, one of them was bad. Medea’s words came back to him, “In the hands of a master, any spell can be dangerous.” Would he have considered using such spells offensively? Not in a million years. Yet Medea had, and to great effect.
His eyes roved the library. How many spells were contained in these books? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? How many had Medea committed to memory, on the off chance they might be Useful one day? He could read all day every day for decades and not scratch the surface. No wonder she was insulted when an apprentice thought they could kill her.
As he had.
No—he could still kill her, just not using magic. There was more than one way to break a person. He could—
Nikolai slammed his fist on the table. Damnit! He was doing it again. He needed to be smarter, consider his options. Revenge was sweet, but he needed to think long-term.
Medea was a neutral party. Unlike himself, she had no greater aspirations. She was perfectly content to sit alone on her little island, researching new spells and reading. Her knowledge of magic was second to none, and she loved to talk about it. Maybe the best course wasn’t to kill her. She could be a powerful ally—maybe more. Thomas had gotten there. It wasn’t impossible.
What about after his apprenticeship? Masters were allowed unrestricted access to the island. He would be allowed to use her laboratory, dungeons, and library, so long as he kept them in good order and replaced any ingredients used. Continued access to the library alone would be worth it.
Still, she could train others. He drummed his fingers on the table. He’d have to do something about that. It’s not like she was jumping at the chance to take on new people. He’d have to deal with what, one person a decade? He could tackle the problem as it arose.
For the first time since his scarring, he was optimistic. He closed the book and returned it to the shelf, then sat down to finish Medea’s assignment, along with a carefully crafted apology.
* * *
Medea willed the nails out of the board and pulled it off the wall, stacking it neatly with the others. The gap behind wasn’t large enough for the tank she had propped against the bathtub, but she could fix that. The annoying part would be running a second set of pipes to the house.
“What are you doing to my bathroom?” Nikolai leaned against the doorframe. His scalp sported a regrowth of dark fuzz.
“I’m putting a water tank back here. You continually run out of mana because you refuse to do the boiling exercise. From now on, if you want hot showers, you’ll have to heat your own water. I’ll no longer do it for you.”
He grinned. “That’s not much incentive. I grew up in the Soviet Union in the middle of a war. Hot water is a luxury. But for you I’ll make the effort.”
What the hell did that mean? And why was he smiling so much lately? It put her on edge. Some people were overly nice to disguise when they were up to something.
He approached and peered at the wall. “What do you mean you do it for me? If there’s no tank back there now . . .”
She pointed to the pipes. “See these? They run to the ocean. There’s not much fresh water on the island, so I draw up water from my boil site, desalinate it with a spell, and run it through pipes all the way to the house.”
He said nothing. When she looked over, he wore an odd expression. Maybe he was constipated.
“Do you need to use the toilet?” she asked. “I can come back later.”
“Your boil site. Where is it?”
“Under the cave. How else would it get hot water?”
“You boil . . . the ocean?” He stared at her with uncomfortable intensity.
She avoided his gaze and focused on removing more boards. “Yes. The more often you do the boiling exercise, the larger your mana pool grows, which means you can heat more water before running out of mana. I told you when you get better we’d increase the size of the pot.”
The board came loose and she set it aside. “I’ve been doing this for centuries. Small pot, large pot, tub, uh . . . I can’t remember what I used after that. At some point I started heating a nearby lake. That worked well at first, but when I was finally able to heat the whole thing, everything died—the fish, the plants—all rotten. It was disgusting. The ocean is perfect. There’s always cooler water moving in so I never run out, and apprentices seem to enjoy the hot springs above the area.” She looked at him pointedly. “When they’re not drowning in them.”
Nikolai slumped against the doorframe. Was he ill? One hand ran errantly over the fuzz on his head. It looked to be a pleasant sensation and she wanted to touch it, but one didn’t just touch other people’s hair, and anyhow he seemed to be having a moment, though she couldn’t for the life of her understand why.
“You boil the ocean?” he muttered. “From here? Nonstop? ”
“You make it sound like a difficult thing, but the process was incremental. Do you look at a master work of art and think the artist learned their skills overnight? No. I timed the boil with my heartbeat, and now I don’t think about it any more than I do breathing. It’s important to build good habits, especially if you plan to become immortal. Because one day you’ll wake up and five hundred years will have passed, and if you’re not going to be judicious with your time, why have it?”
“Medea, I—” His hand clenched into a fist, and for a moment she thought he would hit something, then he sat on the toilet and shook his head, laughing softly. “Why did you accept me as an apprentice? I mean, I know I manipulated you into it, but there had to be some other reason.”
He didn’t sound at all like himself. Was the curse active? No. The insidious thing encircled his soul as tightly as ever but wasn’t currently permeating his brain.
She made to lean against the tub, only the narrow rim was uncomfortable, and the water tank was in the way. She gave up and levitated in a sitting position. Where to start?
“Because I’m bored. Immortality is . . . long. It gets lonely. I’m used to being alone, but when you get to my level, well, there’s no one to talk to. Every Magi I meet—it’s like trying to make conversation with an infant. Their grasp of magic is immature to the point where we might as well be speaking different languages.
“And sparring—I love sparring! But no one even comes close. You know what I think when another apprentice tries to kill me? Well, two things. One, ‘Not again.’ Two, ‘I hope this lasts more than a minute.’ Five minutes would be a miracle. I handicap myself, you know. I’ll pick a magical school and say, ‘Today I’ll only fight with this.’ I tell my students it’s for their benefit, and they do benefit from it, but in truth it’s more for me. But now even that’s not challenging.
“And it doesn’t matter anymore because magic is dying out, and I’m the only one who seems to notice. You’re an anomaly in that you were born with a bit more magic, but in a few generations, I doubt I’ll see anyone with a quarter as much. I’ll be the only true Magi left. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll kill myself when the loneliness gets too great, but I probably won’t. There are always more books to read, things to learn. But it gets so hard . . .”
“What?” Nikolai stared at her, aghast.
Oh, no. He probably hadn’t wanted a detailed answer. Like when people asked, “How are you?” but it was only a greeting. And now she’d gone overboard and shared too many things.
She dropped to her feet and made for the door. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave you—”
He grabbed her wrist as she passed. She glared at the touch and he relinquished her.
“Sorry. Don’t leave. You said magic is dying ?”
“Yes.” She rubbed the wrist where he’d touched her, then the opposite wrist, making them even. “It’s been going on for some time, but it’s accelerated this last century.”
“How do you know it’s dying out? I’m not contradicting you!” he said at her look. “I just want to know.”
She nodded. “It’s good to ask for evidence. The short answer is I can feel it. I have wards in place to retain ambient magic on the island, but when I leave—”
“You feel like shit.”
“Yes.” Medea smiled. He felt it too! Most apprentices were too weak and unskilled to notice.
“I thought it was—never mind what I thought it was. Are you saying that how it feels here on the island, that’s how it should feel everywhere?” He looked perturbed—not that Nikolai ever truly looked bothered by anything, but perturbed for Nikolai.
“Yes. Pockets of magic remain. My island, the temple, some of the older Magi towns. But in most places, especially the big cities, it’s like there’s an overwhelming . . . emptiness. People go about their business, and no one feels it but me.”
“Have you mentioned it to anyone?” he asked.
“Who would I tell? Individuals don’t matter. The Collective hates me, though I daresay I’ll approach them once testing is complete.”
“Testing?”
“I don’t know what’s causing magic to vanish. I had been hoping to run experiments, maybe even with an apprentice, but then I took you on, and you seemed so . . .” Selfish? Apathetic? She couldn’t think of any inoffensive way to end the sentence, so she just let it hang.
“I’ll help you,” he said quickly.
Of all the people she thought would take her seriously, she never thought Nikolai would be the one. “Okay.”
He smiled and stepped to the side. She was halfway out the door before she recalled why she’d been in the bathroom in the first place. She whipped around and returned to the wall. Her mind dove into the space, pushing it outward on all sides, until the gap behind the wall was large enough to fit the water tank.
* * *
Nikolai watched Medea from the door as she casually ripped apart the space-time continuum or whatever the hell she did to make the massive gap behind the bathroom wall. Since he’d decided against killing her, observing Medea’s power had become infinitely more enjoyable. Allies should be powerful.
He needed to work on cultivating their relationship. The past year, he hadn’t been his best. For whatever reason, Medea had made him forget Harper’s lessons about winning people over. Again and again he’d let his mask slip, resulting in outbursts and snarky comments. If he wanted her as an Ally, he’d have to wear a different mask.
Medea valued truth and so he’d give it to her—in limited quantities. She had to trust him, especially if he wanted to get as far as Thomas. But more importantly, if Medea was right about magic dying—which she probably was—she’d need his help. The woman wasn’t exactly good with people, and the Collective, regardless of their opinion on her, were stubbornly opposed to change.
She stood with her hands on her hips, studying the gap as the tank floated into place. It clattered against the pipes and listed to one side.
No time like the present to start building trust. “By the way . . .” He paused to ensure she was listening. “I’ve decided not to kill you. I know that sounds like a line, but I wanted you to know.”
A range of emotions played across Medea’s face, and she mumbled something about the Botanist.
“What was that?” he asked.
“What?”
“You said something about the Botanist being right.”
“I did? Oh, well, the Botanist told me the reason all my apprentices try to kill me is because I allow them access to too much information too soon. You said you’ve changed your mind, so maybe it—”
Motherfucker. “Is that why you blocked off the entire library?”
She crossed her arms. “I didn’t block off everything , but yes. I’ve never done that before. But it seems to have help—”
Herr Bergmann! He should kill the bastard. Medea watched him with some alarm, and he found his fist poised to punch the door. He relaxed his arm.
“No. It didn’t . Medea, listen to me. It didn’t work. It made me angry. It made me think you were hiding things, like Petrov hid things. It—”
FUCK. He didn’t want to admit to the mistake, nor his motivations for the dive, but the truth would help her, and so he told Medea why he’d been in the ocean and his plans to kill her with her own magic. She listened with increasing alarm, her frown intensifying as she stared off to the side, eyes darting.
“So you see,” he said, “it didn’t help. It only made things worse. Listening to Bergmann—the Botanist—his kind are all about restricting spells. Of course he would tell you to do that.”
“It seemed reasonable advice at the time.” Medea shook her head, then frowned. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“I’ve . . . made errors in judgment of late.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Of late?”
“Don’t start, this is hard enough as it is. I’m not normally one to—”
“Yes, yes, I understand.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I suppose I’d better release my wards on the library. Study whatever you like. I know you’ll gravitate toward the darker stuff, but at least I can ensure you learn it right.”
Trust. It went both ways. Before he could change his mind, he spoke the dreaded words.
“I would prefer if you chose my . . . academic path.” It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, putting his life’s trajectory into someone else’s hands, but he’d sought Medea as a mentor for a reason. She was the best. She’d vowed to make him stronger, and a vow from Medea meant something.
She stared at him like he’d grown two heads, then blurted out, “What the hell ?”
“I may be a slow learner, but I do learn. Don’t make me regret it.”
She grinned. “You know what your first task is, right?”
He sighed. “Yes. I’ll go boil water.”
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