Spellshift Read online

  That was a problem. Tricking people with light had the unfortunate requirement of knowing whose eyes to trick. Any second, a voice would report back that he hadn’t moved at all. He needed a lot more chaos in the crowd to slip away unnoticed. It looked like spewing flames was in order after all.

  The announcer placed a small, harmless geonode into Naia’s hand. Garen painted with abundant strands of light. They burst into arcs of fiery orange and yellow from the palm of her hand. Garen went overboard, not restrained by the reality of how fires were supposed to dance. He sprung the column of flame two stories high and made it wide enough to wrap Naia entirely. She responded gloriously. Before she could tell there was no heat from the fire, she immersed herself in water. The light show only intensified, refracting from the rippling sphere.

  The crowds went into hysteria. Garen no longer had to worry about shielding him or Belen from view. It was all any of them could do to keep from being trampled. Garen ran with the herd, keeping Belen close by. They followed the panicking crowds until the first alleyway offered them escape.

  Garen let his pretend-fires disappear. He reached into a small pocket on his jerkin and retrieved a glowing purple stone. He hadn’t risked checking it since they entered the city. “It’s brighter now. They definitely took the cart into Kalyx.”

  “Then let’s go,” Belen said impatiently.

  Garen kept his eyes peeled for anyone who might be searching for him, but the state of disarray in the square was high enough that Garen could move rather freely. If someone stopped him, Garen could always say he was chasing someone who caused the incident. It wasn’t true for him, but it technically was for Belen.

  The stone glowed brighter as they moved southward. It became harder to blend in as the public streets of Kalyx turned into guild-owned lands. The Smithing Guild had only a small presence in the city, but Garen had to take them a long way around to keep from trespassing.

  As they were able, any movement south brightened the stone. Now, Garen could see why. The expansive halls of the Geonode Guild lay ahead of them. An enormous meeting chamber sat at the edge. Behind it stretched an assortment of craft houses and warehouses. And in the center of it all, eight towers loomed into the sky. The stone was pitch-black with no visible layers or sign of human handiwork. It was an obvious boast to the city of how much depth they possessed. They had formed stone from nothing, altered its composition, and balanced it into the sky. They had even cut some windows into it, though much fewer than the steel towers near Prosquarity. Garen winced. He hated the naïve sound of that word, even in his head.

  A perimeter fence marked their guild’s holdings, and the towers were too deep inside to wander unnoticed toward. Garen noticed an unusual abundance of guard posts along their land. Either their proximity to the outer wall justified the number of crossbowmen, or the Geonode Guild was profiting from their added security. Garen asked Belen to wait out of sight while he took a better look. Belen glared but stayed put.

  Garen circled the grounds and kept himself hidden from anyone paying obvious attention. He noted the consistent glow from the tracking stone the whole way around. It confirmed the slave-smuggling cart was inside somewhere. Of course, that meant he’d learned all he could from the tracker.

  Garen returned, but Belen had disappeared. It didn’t take long to find him. Belen had hopped the fence along the edge and was sneaking toward the towers. Garen ran toward him, hiding with haphazard bends of light from the guards he passed. They didn’t flinch. It was actually impressive that Belen had made it that far without the ability to do so. Belen slipped through a line of shrubs and hid against one of the towers. Garen crouched next to Belen and startled him with a clap on the shoulder.

  “If you want to find her, you’re going to need help. Don’t run off like that again.”

  Belen didn’t argue. He just tapped on the black stone of the tower’s exterior. He raised his eyebrows in request of the help he’d been promised. Garen pulled in enough light to survey the front entrance. A square stone at waist height connected the doors together. The geonode lock was beautifully made. Over a dozen pieces of stone inside needed to shift and swivel, all in the correct ways to unlock without raising alarm. It didn’t fit the “life is perfect and peaceful” impression he got from the forum, but then again, everyone loves to feel safe where they sleep.

  Garen felt pretty confident he could bypass it, given enough time. But he had no idea what other security was waiting for him inside. “Let’s not walk in the front door. People tend to keep secrets buried. Or in this case, reverse buried.”

  He tried to assess how many people nearby would see them floating up the side of the tower. In addition to the local guards, there were various craftsmen and apprentices. Most of them were abuzz with the rumors of what happened at the forum. The social distraction helped, but it was still insane to hide two moving objects from dozens of people. One person pointing would attract more attention than Garen’s prowess could handle.

  It would have to be quick. Garen didn’t waste any more of their valuable time debating how to do it. He summoned a firm gust of wind beneath him and Belen, and he raised it quickly. He slowed them midway up the tower and focused on how to get inside. The black stone was thick and dense, and despite the enormous amount of depth Garen poured into reshaping it, it barely moved. Garen reached deeper, sliding the stone apart at the expense of over half the depth stored in his soul. That much spent would take an entire day to restore. It was always nerve-wracking to perform a feat of magic that he literally couldn’t do twice.

  They stepped through the thin breach. Inside, a young man sat on the floor facing the corner. The room was tiny and plain. A straw mattress took up a quarter of the space. A crude chamber pot sat opposite it. The same black stone was used on the interior walls and door, and Garen understood why. It took an unbelievable amount of depth to move. If people wanted, they could make a prison out of this stuff. Judging by the person in the room, he was pretty sure they already had.

  The young man stared intently down at his lap. He looked a year or two older than Garen, but thin as a pole. Garen stepped closer and saw three melon-sized chunks of geonode ore in front of him.

  “Are you okay?” Garen asked, unsure what he was seeing.

  The man shook his head. His pale skin was stretched tightly over his cheek bones. Where the tunic sleeves ended, frail, muscle-less arms fidgeted over the rough surface of the stone.

  “I need to reach my food,” he said in a dry, raspy voice.

  Garen surveyed the room. He could touch the low ceilings with his hand. There was nothing out of reach.

  He met Garen’s eyes with his own dark stare. He asked entirely out of desperation rather than hope. “Can you warm?” He used what strength he had to lift the rock up to Garen. Belen stood equally lost in confusion.

  “Are you cold?” Garen asked.

  “No. Yes, but no. They need it warm. Need it warming. For me to get food.”

  The painful realization made Garen’s throat tighten. He took the stone from him and imbued the ore with a heating spell. He tested it, and the stone glowed orange. It would serve its eventual owner fine, providing the warmth of Garen’s spell without spending their own depth. Crafting geonodes meant storing depth and the intention of a spell in the stone for later use. Here, it meant starving a person to take that depth from them.

  If a person gave everything, emptied their depth down past the very spark of life in their soul, they would die. Garen had no way of knowing how many met that fate, but it seemed like this fellow wasn’t far from risking it just to eat. If not for Micah’s insistence on subtlety, he might have tried to take this guy with him. Garen knew that would make everything else they needed to do in this city much harder.

  He picked up the next stone and repeated the process. Garen didn’t care if it was wise to spend that much depth on it. This poor man would eat well for once in his life. The third one he had to leave alone. Flattening the walls back would
be easier than opening them, but he needed enough magic to float Belen and himself down, too. It would also be wise to peek into the hallway, and that meant cracking a wall as small as he could.

  While Garen contemplated these things, Belen had already picked up the last stone. He concentrated until it started to glow orange and handed it back. Garen coughed to clear the choked-up pride in his throat. “We’ll be back. I promise.”

  The man found hope enough to smile. Garen wanted to reflect the sentiment, but couldn’t yet. He stepped to the door and held his ear against it. He heard nothing. Garen used as little depth as possible to create a hole to peek through. The wall was thick. He had to widen it enough to pull an eye’s worth of light through. He pressed his face against the opening. A door of black stone identical to their own stood opposite. A pair of doors matched it on either side. The hallway stretched for a dozen more.

  Garen tried to see up the stairwell, to know if even more floors were filled with prison cells. He missed the gentle footsteps approaching the opposite direction. The guard pressed his face against the opposite side of the peephole, and all of Garen’s vision was replaced by the menacing eyeball inches from him.

  Garen pulled the hole shut and took Belen by the wrist. They leapt from the tower, crudely sealing the exterior wall behind them. He didn’t hear the guard shout. Still, they didn’t waste any time fleeing from the area.

  Chapter 6

  Once Garen left the guild district without any sign of alarm, he breathed a little easier. The sun was beginning to set, and the bright blue and pink lights on the towers near Prosquarity told him their festival was still going strong. Garen instructed Belen to find the others. Garen, however, wasn’t ready to be back under Master Googan’s close watch. He cut through the city with one destination in mind—Spiredal, the Eastern Palace.

  He looked around the massive gates all teeming with royal guards. The fading sunlight hindered Garen’s ability to take in his surroundings. Garen Renyld, the world’s only thief who struggles when the sun goes down. He had just enough light to glance over the palace and determine how many guards would waste his time on his way to see the king. He’d rather skip the nuisance. This wasn’t a break in. This was vital news for two kings currently meeting.

  Garen eased himself into the sky on a disc of wind. He heard several shouts as he rose over the edge of the gates. None of them could respond fast enough to stop him. A sizable balcony stretched out near the top of the tower. He determined it must be of some royal importance.

  He wasn’t jealous of the guard stationed on the balcony, especially given the chilly breeze at this height. The guard shouted down at him. Garen bent a vision into his eyes of what it would look like if the man took a dozen or so steps out into the expanse. The guard’s knees buckled, and he hugged the rails for dear life. Garen strode past him and opened the door.

  Wool-stuffed linens decorated the interior where clearly the finest, most pampered minds in the kingdom could sit and discuss how to make their buildings taller and streets shinier. As soon as Garen stepped into the room, guards moved in from the hallway, likely alerted by those stationed at the gate. Even the semi-traumatized exterior guard made a heroic entrance. He grappled Garen’s arms behind his back. Garen made no effort to resist at this point.

  “Guards, stand down.” The voice was at ease while bellowing commands. Amiri rose from his seat and all other voices went quiet. Garen hadn’t seen the man in five years, but he still recognized the domineering eyes above his bushy black beard. It felt like an eternity since training alongside the emperor’s sons. Amiri was the oldest of the brothers and certainly the most distant when they lived together. Garen always held him in high regard.

  In this setting, that awe only multiplied. Amiri wore a perfectly tailored dark blue robe, further cinched at the waist by a silk black belt. A lighter blue cloak was draped over both shoulders. Garen had entered the room full of anger and demands. A new sense of smallness dulled those emotions. If Garen wasn’t certain that such magic didn’t exist, he’d have thought for certain that he’d fallen into a spell.

  The guards from the hall left the room, and the one holding Garen released his grip. He shot him one last dirty look before stepping back onto the balcony and closing the door behind him. Only Garen and the kings remained. Micah did not stand during the unexpected entrance. He sat with perfect posture.

  Amiri motioned Garen over. “So, I finally get to see the man you’ve grown into. Imagine how strange it is to hear all these stories of a new Light Spellsword. I’ve had to imagine a 13-year-old with each tale. Seeing you now makes it slightly easier to believe.”

  The sentiment made Garen smile. He tried to push the nostalgia away and remember what he’d come here for. He stayed standing while Amiri sat back down across from Micah.

  “It’s good to see you as well, Amiri. But I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  “Yes, I’ve come to expect that. People rarely burst in from the sky with pleasant interruptions.”

  Garen nodded. “The towers of the Geonode Guild are filled with slaves. The whole place is a prison.” Garen regretted not having more time to investigate. Nothing would feel better than having physical proof to drop at their feet. But if a random hall in the tower looked like that, he knew there would be plenty more floors like it.

  Amiri’s eye twitched. “Right to the point, I see. I’ll return the favor and be blunt with you. Kingdoms with the kind of demand and ambition such as ours need that labor. It is one of the many regretful costs of greatness. But I can assure you that any indentured laborers used to mine, cut, or imbue geonodes have the proper papers, as laid out in the guild charters.”

  “Do those papers let them starve workers to death? The man I saw was ready to end his life by emptying his depth, and just for another goffing meal.”

  “Garen!” Micah finally stood. “Tell me you didn’t?”

  He remembered the kind of concerns Micah raised before the trip. This didn’t seem like one of them. This was the kind of information that should help. “We saw where they hold the slaves, and we know the same cart they used in Vikar-Tola was nearby. The only thing I didn’t find was the orphan girl they took.”

  “You came here to retrieve a child?” Amiri asked, trying to piece together their story and their motivation.

  “A part of me hoped so,” Garen said. “But it’s bigger than that. We’re here to learn why the outrage toward the Eastern slave trade keeps growing. The men who abducted a girl right off the street just made it easy enough to track.”

  “So, you witnessed this?”

  Garen hesitated. “Well, not directly. But her brother did and led us to them.”

  Amiri sighed and shook his head. “Garen, I want to give you my time and attention, but I’m going to need more than the word of an orphan before I make claims against the most powerful guild in the kingdom.”

  “It is more than that! The stone in those towers is almost impossible to escape from. And I think—”

  “Garen!” Micah was still standing and growing redder in the face by the moment. “Please excuse yourself from this meeting.”

  Amiri stroked his beard calmly. “Brother, you can’t be upset with him. Consider yourself lucky to work with people who follow their hearts. I don’t have many speaking from such a place in my court these days. Though disturbing and unproven, I assure you the perspective is valuable.”

  “Thank you,” Garen said.

  “Sadly,” Amiri’s gaze wandered upward, “this is no small accusation. It will be even trickier given the moral nature of the claims. I’d like to think that it would be common decency not to wring dry the souls of one’s work force, but we may find ourselves at odds with those who don’t. I can call upon the Geonode Guild for a full explanation. If what you say is true, I can suspend any of their bylaws until their practices are reformed. This will, of course, take some time.”

  The response left Garen half-relieved. “I suppose so. Hopefully, Sarkos
will be equally patient with his demands.”

  “Patient with…what demands?” Amiri asked.

  Garen looked over to Micah who sat down once more. He hung his head low. Garen could hardly believe the news hadn’t traveled yet or that Micah hadn’t brought it up. And now, he knew the dilemma he had forced himself into. He had to tell the truth. An entire city of ears would eventually spread the real message. Unfortunately, trying to explain the real motive for their visit did not cast Micah or the Spellswords in a positive light.

  “Sarkos told the city,” Garen explained, “specifically us, that if we did not stop the atrocities committed out here, we would find ourselves at war with them.”

  Now Amiri’s face began to redden. Garen could not miss the look of contempt shot between brothers. “You are both dismissed.”

  “Wait a moment,” Garen pleaded. “You have to understand we came here to help—”

  “Then you have failed!” Amiri shouted. “And you are far too compromised by selfish motives to advise me on the state of my kingdom. Like every Spellsword before you, you do not know your place in this world! You may enjoy the hospitality of your arrangements here tonight. But I trust you will have a safe journey home first thing in the morning.”

  The doors opened and once more the palace guards stepped into the room.

  Micah bowed low. “Your kindness is undeserved. We will excuse ourselves this evening.”

  * * * * *

  Micah kept his composure until entering the Spiredal lifter with Garen. From the moment the doors closed around them, stress poured out of Micah like an overturned bucket.

  “When I told you to choose diplomacy over information gathering, did you suffer some injury to the head afterward? Do you remember why we’re here? A man has threatened our kingdom with war! And it wasn’t the one you just provoked.”