Alchemist Illusion (The Alchemist Book 3) Read online

  “We can keep working on this,” she suggested. “I’m convinced that the vrandal is the key to you understanding the kind of power that you have access to. Somehow, I think that is going to help you tie into your connection to the arcane arts.” She waved a hand, cutting off what she anticipated his next question to be. “Don’t ask me how because I just don’t know, but I think you will find a way.”

  “Always so optimistic,” he said.

  “I find that it is more helpful that way,” Tara said. “Anyway, just keep working, and maybe you can even find something in the almanac that will help you.”

  Sam looked down at it. “I can keep looking, but it seems like this is all tied to the arcane arts,” he said.

  “Not all of it,” she replied. “Reach for the source?” She shrugged. “I don’t know what that is, but it’s not the arcane arts.”

  They both had agreed that there might have been something within the book that should help Sam figure out the key to the vrandal. As the vrandal was the key, that seemed significant to them both. It was like a puzzle that they couldn’t solve. Between that, all of the alchemy symbols that made up the book, and the power that it described using, they didn’t have much time for any other research.

  As Sam flipped through the pages, Tara got up and headed to the shelves. “Havash has really settled in.”

  “He hasn’t been here much lately.”

  “Not in this room. As Grandam.”

  Sam looked up. “I get the sense from him that he’s not sure how excited to be about the position. I don’t know enough about what happened before or what reason he had for leaving, but I have a feeling that he had been chasing alchemy. True alchemy.”

  Tara looked back at him. “Or he just thought that the Academy was in good hands.”

  “I doubt it,” Sam said. “This is Havash, after all. I suspect you learn something about the almanac, the vrandal, and went looking because he couldn’t find it from the alchemists here.”

  “I’m not exactly sure that is what fits with him. At the time, but after Grandam Jons passed, we got Grandam Bethal,” she said. “And we know how that turned out.”

  “I still can’t believe how long she plotted to gain power.”

  Tara paused at one of the shelves and pulled a book down, turning it in her hands for a moment. “She was patient. That’s why I worry about her. Whatever power she was after was there, Sam.”

  He knew that, but he had no idea what the Grandam had been after. Even having seen it, having seen that glowing white energy that had looked something like a man, Sam had no idea what she was after.

  “Do you think they will come again?” he asked.

  “I know your answer to that question,” she said. She looked over to him. “Otherwise, why are we practicing like this?”

  Something about the Grandam bothered him.

  “She was the worst, though. It was bad enough when the Secundum betrayed us, as Ferand was his brother, but the Grandam… She used us. How many students were exposed to her influence without us knowing?” Tara locked eyes with him. “How many were recruited to serve the Nighlan?”

  He hadn’t considered that.

  Sam rubbed his head, thinking about the healing she had attempted on him. At the time, he hadn’t known if there was something more to it that he needed to understand, but it had been painful. More painful than anything he’d ever experienced before.

  Because she was trying to harm him.

  “You fear her because she was patient?” he asked.

  “The one who’s the most patient is often the one you have to fear most. Think of all she might have done in the city. Even Havash didn’t suspect her.”

  That was true, and had Sam not been blinded by Bethal’s healing, he might not have been in a position to overhear her and discover the truth.

  “I fear her,” Tara continued, “because I didn’t know it was her. I don’t like that she was able to hide from us, in plain sight.”

  “I think we have to be just as concerned about who else might be hiding in the Academy.”

  Tara frowned. “That’s not funny.”

  “I don’t mean it as a joke. Since I’ve been here, there has been Ben, then Ferand, and Bethal. All within the Academy walls. How many others do you think could be hiding?”

  Tara turned back to the almanacs and slipped another one from the shelf before turning back to him. “Hopefully, Havash can find out.”

  “Now that we know there’s a danger, we can help him by using the Study Halls to search for anyone who might be doing anything unusual.” Ever since the attack, Sam had been unsettled. He still was, at least a little, but traveling through the hidden Academy halls was a different experience for him now. The hidden hallways were far more extensive than they had ever known. Sam and Tara were still working through them, trying to explore and figure out what barriers existed that the vrandal could get them through, but other than the ones they had uncovered, it didn’t seem as if they were anymore. Perhaps they had been disrupted. It was something he and Tara wanted to try to answer as well. It just felt like there were so many things they wanted to do and not nearly the time to do it.

  She shook her head. “You really know how to make me feel more comfortable with everything, don’t you?”

  “I wasn’t trying to scare you. I was just—”

  She took a seat across from him and settled back in the chair. “Just trying to scare me.” She flashed a smile. “You’re right, though. I should have been thinking about who else might be suspicious too. I suspect Havash is doing it, but if he’s not…”

  “If he’s not, then we need to.”

  She looked at the almanac still in Sam’s lap. “Maybe that’s even more reason for us to keep working. If we’re concerned about what might happen, we’d better be preparing.”

  Sam flipped the almanac back open, and as he moved through the pages, he couldn’t help but wonder when it would be his turn to find magic. Tara watched him, and he had a sense she could read his thoughts, though he guessed that the way she looked at him had more to do with her anticipation of another set of instructions. The power they were able to use in this way was considerable.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “We both need to keep practicing. You need to reach the arcane arts, and I need to grow.” She rubbed her hands together. “Even my advanced angulation classes aren’t nearly this complicated. And they don’t hurt.”

  “And hurting is good?”

  “When it comes to the arcane arts, my mother always used to say that pain meant change. Change meant growth. That’s what I want.”

  Sam turned the pages until he got to one that they hadn’t tried before. That was their focus most of the time: learning something new. When they did, Tara would memorize it so that they would be able to use it later.

  He lifted the vrandal above the page, ready to summon power through it. He called to that power, letting it flow out of him and into the page.

  “Tap into the source—”

  “You can skip that. It’s always about reaching or tapping into the source.”

  “—and you begin to find three different connections. You must draw each out in a perfect arc at an equidistance from each other, spinning them at one revolution every three seconds.”

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  Sam looked up. Her jaw was clenched even more than it had been before. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Pain meant change. Change meant growth. With whatever she was doing now, she would have plenty of opportunities for change.

  “Once you begin your revolutions,” he continued, “you must invert the entirety of the process, so the revolution spirals around you on a contralateral plane to your current orientation.” Sam watched her.

  “It’s not easy,” she said through gritted teeth. “Keep going.”

  “Do you need to stand up for this?”

  She grunted. “It might help.”

  Tara stood, and he turned his attention bac
k to the almanac. “Hold that rotation for twenty revolutions. Oops, I should have read that sooner.”

  “That’s fine. I’ve counted.”

  “Then you need to…”

  A strange flicker of power caught his attention.

  “What do I need to do?” she asked.

  Sam got to his feet with the almanac and headed toward the door. That was the source of power. He could feel the presence and pressure there, though he didn’t know what he was detecting. Something of arcane magic, or was it Alchemy?

  “Sam?”

  He remained standing, and he looked down at the almanac again. “You need to let the revolutions surround you, and then you turn them once, so the rotation is about parallel to where you had been…”

  Sam trailed off. The strange pressure was building. There was something on the other side of the door.

  “What next?” Tara asked.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  He stopped in front of the door. The fluttering returned. Pressure continued building.

  Sam didn’t know what caused it, only that he could feel the nature of that power as it rolled outward. It was something he recognized from the time when he’d lost his vision when he had begun to grow increasingly sensitive to the sensation of power. Had he not noticed that sense, he might not have been able to feel what was on the other side of the door.

  Sam reached for the handle.

  The door thundered open.

  He was thrown back. The almanac wrenched out of his hand. He scrambled toward it.

  Sam couldn’t tell what had attacked, only that there was a shadowy movement near the door. As he reached for the almanac, something loomed over him. Power emanated from whomever it was, the kind of power he could practically see.

  There was other power in the room, though, and it exploded behind him in a flash of white.

  When it dissipated, the looming sense was gone.

  Chapter Two

  Moments passed before Sam’s vision cleared.

  There was the afterimage of the blinding white light, a sense across his skin of the magic Tara had unleashed. A surge of energy had rolled through him, leading his vrandal to burst with a power that echoed within him.

  “Sam?”

  Tara’s voice echoed in the distance, and he sat up, looking over at her. “I’m here.”

  “What happened? I lost control of it. Did I hurt you?”

  He let out a nervous laugh. “That was it? Just control?”

  “Why?”

  Sam frowned to himself. “I don’t know. I could’ve sworn there was something else here. It was something that I felt, but…” He stared. “I don’t know what it was. And now it’s gone.”

  If there had been an attack, it felt too soon.

  He grabbed the almanac from the floor, dusted himself off, and turned to her. Sweat streamed down her face, and she wiped an arm across her forehead. What would have happened to them had she not been using the power he’d been instructing her to use at that time?

  “There was an attack.” Sam looked around the room, but there was no evidence that anyone had been there. “I felt something by the door and went after it. I don’t know what it was, only that what I felt was…” He didn’t even know what he’d felt. Not like what he usually detected within the Academy; it didn’t even seem like arcane arts. Powerful, regardless of what had triggered it.

  Tara helped him stand, held on to his arm, and guided him back toward the chair. He cradled the almanac in his arms until she closed the door and used arcane arts to barricade it shut.

  “That might hold for a little while,” she said. “If someone knows enough arcane arts, they will probably be able to force their way inside, but I hope it’ll give us some time.”

  And here they had been talking about taking time to understand the almanac so that they could be ready for another attack. In the back of his mind, Sam believed they had more time. Obviously, the Grandam had decided that they wouldn’t be given that time.

  “We need to find Havash.”

  Tara looked around, and he could see her still glowing with her arcane arts, the power that she was holding onto. “Take that with you,” she said, nodding to the almanac. “If they were after that —”

  “Why would they be after it now?” That was the part that didn’t make sense to him. When they had attacked before, they hadn’t really needed the almanac. Whatever the Grandam had been after had not been tied to the almanac.

  “How would the Nighlan sneak in here undetected?” Sam muttered.

  “You are asking me how the Nighlan, people who have exquisite knowledge of magic and power and have already proven a capability and willingness to attack the Academy, managed to break in again?”

  “Unless they didn’t break in,” Sam said. “We’ve been so focused on the Nighlan, but your comment still holds. What if she influenced others here?”

  They might already have too many people working on behalf of the Nighlan. If so, there might not be anything they could do. It might already be too late.

  They stepped out into the hall. There was no sign of the attack, no sign of anyone having been here at all. The only thing he was aware of was the residual stench in the halls. That might not ever leave, though he and others had scrubbed and tried to burn away the effect of the explosion from it.

  They started up the stairs, hurrying past the kitchen and into the central hall, where she guided him up a wide flight of stairs. Sam contemplated going to Okun. He was an alchemist—a real alchemist, as far as Sam could tell. He had knowledge and some experience and was embedded within the kitchen to observe the Academy.

  Once he talked to Havash, he would go to Okun.

  The main hallway was quiet as usual. There were not many students who bothered coming down to the kitchen. For the most part, they stayed in their towers, and when they did come down here, it was to leave the Academy altogether. There weren’t too many opportunities to do that anymore, though. Not since the attacks. They had been held in the Academy, presumably for their own benefit.

  Tara guided them toward the central staircase and then up. By the time they reached the second level where the instructor offices were found, Sam had started to question what he had felt. Maybe it had been nothing.

  She stopped at a door that had once been the Grandam's office. That Havash now occupied it felt both fitting and strange.

  “Maybe we should —”

  The door came open, and Havash nearly crashed into them.

  He looked like a different man than the one who’d come to Sam in Erstan. That man had been somewhat disheveled and dirtied by his travels, though powerful. This one wore his new—and old—office robe, and he radiated a sense of power.

  “Samran. Tara. I wasn’t expecting either of you, was I?” He glanced behind him into the room, frowning.

  “We needed to find you,” Sam said.

  “Did you discover anything of use?”

  “Probably,” Sam said hurriedly, “but that wasn’t why we came.” When Havash pursed his lips in a tight frown, he went on. “There was an attack.”

  “Another?”

  Sam recognized all too well the sense of despair within Havash’s voice. Having gone through several attacks already, another one—especially so soon after the last—meant the Academy wasn’t safe.

  “I didn’t see who it was,” Sam explained. “We were practicing in the alchemy tower, and I felt something by the door and opened it. Had Tara not been holding on to one of the almanac’s patterns we were working on, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  Havash motioned for them to join him in his office. Sam and Tara followed him inside the enormous room. Everything had a sense of age to it. A strange metallic item rested on a table near the back of the room, the top of it softly spinning. A towering bookcase overflowing with books stood along one wall, and a hearth occupied another, lending the room a sense of warmth. A plush rug covered most of the floor. Movement near the other end of the
room caught Sam’s eye, but he couldn’t see what it came from. As far as he could tell, no one else was even here. Havash pulled the door closed behind them and sealed it with a burst of arcane arts that pressed upon Sam.

  “Do you care to tell me what you experienced?” Havash asked. “You told me there was an attack. Ms. Stone used a power that defeated this attacker, but you didn’t see who it was.”

  “After it happened, there was a blast of light, and when it cleared, there was no sign of them.”

  “Show me.”

  Sam started toward the door, but Havash raised his hand, pressing out with a burst of the arcane arts.

  “Not like that. Show me what you were working on.”

  Glancing at Tara, Sam didn’t know if she would have the strength to recreate it. The last one had been intensely powerful, and it might now be more than she could withstand.

  To her credit, she immediately began to perform the pattern. She stood in an open part of the room with her hands off to either side.

  “Do you need me to read it to you again?” Sam whispered.

  She shook her head. “I remember.”

  When the power started to build, it did so with the same intensity. There was a surge of energy. It started to surround her and swirl outward.

  “That’s enough, Ms. Stone,” Havash said in a careful whisper.

  “Are you sure? I can hold it a little longer. I don’t know if I’ll be able to release it with any control. This one is really difficult.”

  “I’m quite sure. Please target the hearth if you would like to make sure you don’t destroy Samran.”

  Sam took a step back before catching himself. The power exploded in the hearth with a blast of white light, much like what he’d seen when they’d been in the alchemy tower, but it passed quickly. The surge of light didn’t affect him quite the same way as it had before. He struggled with the brightness, and it took a moment for his vision to clear. He’d expected the hearth to be blasted from the room, but there was no damage to it. Havash held his hand out as he made a small and steady circuit around the hearth. A hint of power radiated from him in a soft glow.

  Havash looked over his shoulder at them. “The angulation you performed is quite impressive, Ms. Stone. That is very advanced.”