Мария Снайдер - Magic Study - Study 2

I waited until I had a warm fire lit in my rooms before unrolling the Commander’s message. Staring at the dancing flames, I contemplated Commander Ambrose’s offer. I held the order for my execution in my hands. But tossing it into the fire would not be a simple act. A brief note had been written on the document.

Prove my loyalties to Ixia and the order would be nullified. Show the benefits of having a magician working for Ixia to the Ixian generals and an adviser’s position would be mine. Do these things and I could return to Ixia. Return to my friends. Return to Valek.

Without knowing it, Cahil had seen my possible future when he had called me a master spy at the Council’s session.

I gazed at the fire as my conflicting emotions, my conflicting loyalties and my conflicting desires all burned and danced in my chest, mimicking the flames. Coming no closer to a decision, I hid the execution order in my backpack. It might be better to think about it later.

Remembering my promise to my parents, I headed toward the dining hall, hoping I would find them eating lunch. Along the way, I encountered Dax.

“Yelena,” he said, falling in step with me. “Haven’t seen you in days.”

“I’m sure you’re just dying to tell me all the campus gossip about me. Right?”

“I do have a life. Maybe I’ve been too busy to listen to rumors,” he huffed, pretending to have hurt feelings.

I looked at him.

He sighed. “Okay, you win. I’m bored out of my skull. Second Magician is busy playing detective, and Gelsi is neck-deep in some project and I never see her anymore.” Dax paused dramatically. “My life is so boring that I have to live vicariously through your adventures.”

“And since the rumors are so accurate—”

“Your adventures have turned into legends.” He swept his arms wide, laughing. “So where are you off to now? Going to slay a dragon? Can I tag along as your lowly squire? I’ll polish your staff of power every night with my shirt. I promise.”

“I’m glad my problems are keeping you entertained,” I said with some sarcasm. “I’m searching for my…ah, for the Tree King and his Queen. We’re going to plan our attack against the evil Tree Varmints who have assembled an invisible army in the Keep.”

Dax’s eyes lit up. “I heard about the Tree Queen’s adventures this morning.”

The game soured. I didn’t want to hear the students’ gossip about my mother. Before Dax could elaborate, I invited him to tag along.

I found my parents in the dining hall and we joined them. While we ate, Dax’s presence worked to my advantage. The topic of conversation stayed on school and horses and mundane matters, giving my parents no chance to question me about the Council session. And when my mother offered to distill a special cologne for Dax, I knew she was glad I had found a Sitian friend.

After saying goodbye to Dax, I went to the guest quarters with my parents. As Perl brewed some tea in the small kitchen, I asked Esau about the Curare. Irys had told him about the drug when she feared Ferde had kidnapped me.

He ran a calloused hand over his face. “I never thought it would be used like that,” he said, shaking his head. “When I discover something new, I always experiment with it until I know all the side effects and know how the substance could be used or abused. Then I weigh the good against the bad. Some discoveries never see the light of day, but for others, even though they might not be perfect, the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Esau stopped speaking when Perl entered the room carrying a tray of tea. The warning in my father’s eyes told me that my mother didn’t know about Ferde’s gruesome use of the Curare.

She served the tea and sat close to me on the couch. She had worn her cloak during lunch, but had removed it when we entered their suite.

“What happened at the Council’s session?” she asked me.

I gave them a watered-down version of Cahil’s accusations against Adviser Ilom. Perl’s hand flew to her neck when I mentioned Valek’s name, but she relaxed when I told her Cahil had been proven wrong. Neglecting to mention Cahil’s claims about my involvement with Valek, I informed them about Goel’s murder.

“Good,” Perl said. “Saves me the effort of cursing him.”

“Mother!” I was astonished. “Can you do that?”

“Perfumes and scents are not the only things I can concoct.”

I looked at Esau. He nodded his head. “Good thing Reyad and Mogkan were already dead. Your mother has quite the imagination when she’s angry.”

I wondered what other surprises I would discover about my parents. Changing the subject, I asked about their journey to the Keep and about the Zaltana family, spending the day with them as promised.

When the hour had grown late, Esau offered to escort me to my rooms. At first I declined. I hadn’t been assigned guards since the episode with Goel. When he insisted and when Perl frowned, I remembered her comment about curses and not wanting to be a target of her ire, I agreed.

The campus atmosphere hung silent and empty. Moonlight glistened off the ice-coated trees. Only four more days until the full moon. My hand found Valek’s snake and I twisted the bracelet around my arm.

When we were halfway to my rooms Esau said, “I need to tell you another thing about Curare.”

“There’s more?”

He nodded. “The stinging nettle plant was the reason I sent the shipment of Curare to the Sandseeds before I finished all my experiments on the drug. The plant grows in the Avibian Plains and the sting causes unbearable pain for many days. It’s usually the children who wander into a patch without realizing it. In low doses, Curare is excellent for numbing the wound. It had never occurred to me that someone would use high doses of Curare to paralyze the entire body.” Esau frowned, running a hand through his shoulder length gray hair. “Later I discovered another side effect that seemed minor at the time. But now…” Esau stopped and turned to me. “At high doses the Curare will also paralyze a person’s magical abilities.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. That meant Curare could render even a Master Magician completely helpless. Tomorrow night was the time of the secret exchange. Since I had taken over Goel’s body with my magic, I planned to take over Ferde’s, believing that, even if I was incapacitated by the drug, I could still use my magic. It now seemed imperative that I avoid getting shot with Curare.

My father must have seen the horror in my eyes. “There is an antidote of sorts,” he said.

“Antidote?”

“Not a complete reversal, but it does free the magic and return some feeling, although it creates some new problems.” Esau shook his head in frustration. “I haven’t been able to experiment with it fully.”

“What is it?”

“Theobroma.”

That explained the new problem. Eating the brown sweet would open my mind to magical influences. My mental defenses would not work against another magician, even one weaker than me.

“How much Theobroma would I need?” I asked my father.

“A lot. Though, I could concentrate it,” he mused.

A chill wind blew through me, shivering I pulled my cloak tighter as we continued our walk.

“It wouldn’t taste as good, but it would be a smaller quantity,” Esau said.

“Can you do it by tomorrow afternoon?” I asked.

He stared at me. A worried concern filled his kind eyes.

“Are you going to do something that I shouldn’t tell your mother about?”

“Yes.”

“Important?”

“Very.”

My father considered my request. When we arrived at my rooms, he gave me a hug. “Do you know what you’re doing?”