Chapter Twelve

 

 

 

Benton

Flipping through the grimoires brought back memories of reading my Uncle Brendan’s journals.  He was the most interesting of all my ancestors, but his journals had never mentioned anything about The Heart of Fire and Ice. How would we find anything when I’d read all he had to say about his life already? After scouring nearly all the grimoires and scrolls, it was starting to feel as futile as resurrecting an incinerated faery.

I tapped furiously on the ancient desk before me, the current volume of spells useless to me. “This is a waste of time. I’m telling you, I’ve been through all these already. There’s nothing we can use here.”

Shade sighed. “It’s here. It must be. Where else would we find anything related to Uncle Brendan and his excursions with the Land of Faerie?”

I muttered my protest and kept looking, afraid that if Brendan had hidden it so well, it wasn’t a place that should be found. My gut was telling me so when my sword lit up on the desk before me. It had felt strangely heavy on my hip, so I’d taken it out of its scabbard. Luckily, I hadn’t placed it on anything flammable. Fire ignited along the blade, crackling and snapping in the cool air of the Pyren.

“What the…?” I jumped to my feet, wide-eyed. My Empyrean blade had never done that before.

“What’s it doing?” Anna asked. My siblings all watched as the blade began to turn, its glow pulsating as it moved, until it came to a stop and began to burn a cobalt blue.

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen it do that.”

“Didn’t you say the blade carries memories of our ancestors?” Shade leaned forward and looked the direction it was pointing.

The blue flames slithered across the room onto a trunk that flipped open. All the books flew out of it. Now empty, the bottom of the trunk lit up, sending an acrid taste of smoke and gunpowder shooting through the air as the bottom of the trunk blew up into splinters.

As quickly as it had begun, the sword fell dormant. I got up and slowly approached the trunk. Residual smoke wisps floated into the air as I leaned over it and peered inside.

“Whoa… that was wicked! Thanks for the show, Uncle Brendan!” I reached in and yanked out a grimoire from beneath the ashes. It had been hidden in a false bottom. Fortunately, the fire had not harmed it; it was intact but undated and looked to be as old as his other journals.

Shade was at my side immediately, pondering the leather cover as I opened the volume and read the familiar bold, loopy longhand I recognized as Brendan’s.

“This journal documents the hidden birthplace of magic I encountered one eerie fall in the year of 1702: The Heart of Fire and Ice.” I peered up at Shade, whose excitement was as apparent as mine. “This is it!”

“Check if there’s a map or something we can follow.”

I flipped through it until I found my uncle’s chicken scratch of a map. It seemed that The Heart lay in the mountains of northern Alaska.

“Is that Alaska?” Anna asked as she squeezed her way between Shade and me. “No way! We can’t go to Alaska right now. It’s the dead of winter. We’ll die of exposure!”

“I agree.” Shade pressed her lips together. “But even in winter we can warm ourselves with our magic. Still, I don’t want to hike through ten foot drifts. Maybe Camulus can help us travel there now that we have the exact location.”

I turned toward Shade, who’d begun pacing the room. Her thoughts were churning, and I knew better than to interrupt her while she thought things through. I wasn’t sure what kind of dangers this place held, and knowing Shade, she was concocting some sort of backup plan.

“Okay, then, let’s get through the rest of these pages and see what it has to offer.”

I stared hard at the ancient book, the words loopy and faded. My uncle had a way with words, and his prose always pulled me into his stories. I wondered if my siblings had gotten through all the grimoires before. I doubted it. Surprised to find another one of his books was exciting to me, though, and I couldn’t wait to dive in.

Shade returned and looked down at the page I had open. “Benton, it says to not tread there lightly. That only those of fire and ice can enter safely. If that’s true, how did Brendan enter? He only had elemental fire powers, not ice magic.”

I looked up at Shade and shrugged. I honestly didn’t know how Brendan had pulled it off. I turned my attention back to the book and flipped through the pages to find any mention of ice.

“Here.” I pointed to a paragraph surrounded by doodles and symbols. Many of them meant nothing to us. Only one was decipherable, and it meant “fire”.

“To obtain access, I had to show that I could command both the fire and the ice. It was difficult to obtain, for I had to purchase the blood of an ice elemental from a disreputable faery merchant. For a dear price, he could locate anything I might need, and rarely did I dare question his methods. Once I had the blood, I had to smear it across my hands and ignite it with my powers. Unfortunately, it was not pleasant to wield the ice power. I would not want to experience such an ordeal again. The magic caused the tips of my fingertips and toes to suffer frostbite, and the ensuing pain was unbearable, but it, in part, granted me access to The Heart of Fire and Ice.”

We threw each other a look, not liking where this was going.

“What does he mean by ‘in part’?” I asked.

Shade shrugged. “It means there’s something else that needs to be done… or known. And if he didn’t write that down, you know where we’ll have to go to figure it out.”

“Arthas,” I groaned. Kilara had said Brendan and Arthas had knowledge of the place we sought. I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to go to the slumbering Ancient, but now it seemed we didn’t have a choice.

I turned another page. “I’ll go through the rest of the book, but at a glance, this looks like the only part that mentions actually getting inside.”

Shade nodded. “No one can do it but me,” she whispered. “There’s no need for us all to go. I have both fire and ice powers, so I won’t need to obtain anyone else’s magic. And no one else should have to deal with Arthas.”

“You can’t be serious. I won’t let you go alone. What if something happens? We need another plan in case you can’t enter.” I shook my head. My sister was as stubborn as they came, but I’d have the last word.

“Benton—”

“Don’t ‘Benton’ me. I’m going with you, and that’s final. We’ll deal with Arthas if we have to, but for me to get in, we need the blood of someone with ice magic. Corb! We need Corb’s blood!”

“I don’t like that idea.” Shade frowned as she thought about what to do. I could practically hear the gears working in her head. At any moment, I imagined to see steam shoot from her ears. The image ran away from me, and I began to laugh.

She threw me a disgusted look. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s just… nothing. You’re thinking too hard. Really. Look, if something happens, if you get trapped or injured, I have to be able to help you. So I need a vial of Corb’s blood.”

“Why not mine?” she asked. “I stole some of Corb’s ice magic.”

I shook my head. “You know how this ancient magic works. It knows. It remembers. It won’t let me in with your magic after having just let you in. It’ll know we’re trying to pull a fast one. And besides, you’ve shed enough. He can donate some for the cause.”

“Fine.” Her frown deepened as she closed her eyes, but I could tell she knew I was right. She began rubbing her temples. “Learn the spell, but I go in alone. You only follow if I need you. Got it?”

“Got it.”

She nodded and blew out a breath. The four of us were silent for a moment. The air was thick with the grim understanding this mission wasn’t going to be easy no matter what spells, charms, or other magical preparations we had. We wouldn’t be able to let our guards down until it was all over, Kilara had the magic she needed, and we were safely back among our friends.

“I wish Kilara was gone,” Shade suddenly said, her voice breaking the spell of the moment. “She’s caused nothing but pain to us all.”

“Her time’s definitely coming.” I walked back to the desk, picked up my Empyrean sword, and slid it into the sheath at my hip. “If anyone needs to go, it’s her.”

Shade nodded, her eyes gleaming wet. My sister’s life was far from easy, and I never envied it; she’d had nothing but trouble, especially since our mother’s death. At least we had each other. The four of us together were an unstoppable force, but from the concern etched on Shade’s face, I could tell that it weighed heavy on her all the time.

“Benton?”

“What’s up, sis?”

“Do you think I should try to take Kilara’s place?” She stared back at me, her eyes hard with the knowledge of what she had to do. We’d both done so many gruesome things for the Land of Faerie, things neither of us often spoke of.

“When the time comes, you’ll know what to do for sure. If it comes to that, yes, do what you must, but try not to worry so much. You’ll wrinkle your immaculate skin.”

I snickered and received a slap on the arm from her. There was the sister I missed so much. She hid behind the mask of royalty and responsibility well, but the young girl from Portland who heard voices and kept to herself was still there, deep inside, fighting for release.