Benedict Jacka - Fated

The park is about ten minutes’ walk from my shop, tucked down a twisting backstreet that nobody ever uses. It’s overgrown to the point of being nearly invisible behind the fence and trees. There are construction vehicles parked outside — officially the park’s supposed to be closed for redevelopment, but somehow the work never seems to get done. There are buildings all around, but leaves and branches shelter you from watching eyes.

I was sitting on a blanket with my back against a beech tree when I heard the faint rattle of a bicycle on the road outside. A moment later a girl appeared through the trees, ducking under the branches. I waved and she changed direction, walking across the grass towards me.

A glance at Luna would show you a girl in her early twenties, with blue eyes, fair skin and wavy light brown hair worn up in two bunches. She moves very carefully, always looking where she places her hands and feet, and often she seems as though her body’s there while her mind’s somewhere far away. She hardly ever smiles and I’ve never seen her laugh, but apart from that you could talk to her without noticing anything strange … at least to begin with.

Luna’s one of those people who was born into the world of magic without ever really getting a choice. Adepts and even mages can choose to abandon their power if they want to, bury their talents in the sand and walk away, but for Luna it’s different. A few hundred years ago in Sicily, one of Luna’s ancestors made the mistake of upsetting a powerful strega . Back country witches have a reputation for being vicious, but this one was mean even by witch standards. Instead of just killing the man, she put a curse on him that would strike his youngest daughter, and his daughter’s daughter, and her daughter after that, following his children down and down through the generations until his descendants died out or the world ended, whichever came first.

I don’t know how that long-dead witch managed to bind the curse so tightly to the family line, but she did a hell of a thorough job. She’s been dust and bones for centuries but the curse is just as strong as ever, and Luna’s the one in this generation who inherited it. Part of the reason the curse is so nasty is that it’s almost impossible to tell it’s there. Even a mage wouldn’t notice it unless he knew exactly what to look for. If I concentrate I can see it around Luna as a kind of silvery-grey mist, but I only have the vaguest idea how it does what it does.

‘Hey,’ Luna said as she reached me, slinging her backpack off her shoulder. Instead of sitting on the blanket she picked a spot on the grass, a few yards away from me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘You look as if something’s bothering you.’

I shook my head in annoyance. I’d thought I’d concealed it better than that, but I always have trouble hiding things from Luna. ‘Unwelcome visitor. How’s things?’

Luna hesitated. ‘Can you …?’

‘Let’s have a look at it.’

Luna had been only waiting for me to ask; she unzipped her backpack and took out something wrapped in a cotton scarf. She leant forward to place it onto the edge of the blanket and unwrapped it, staying as far away as possible. The scarf fell away, Luna scooted back, and I leant forward in interest. Sitting in the folds of the scarf was what looked like a cube of red crystal.

The thing was about three inches square and deep crimson, the colour of red stained glass. As I looked more closely, though, I saw it wasn’t transparent enough to be glass; I should have been able to see through it, but I couldn’t. Instead, if I looked closely, I could see what looked like tiny white sparks held in the cube’s depths. ‘Huh,’ I said, sitting up. ‘Where’d you find it?’

‘It was in the attic of a house in Clapham West. But …’ Luna paused. ‘There’s something strange. I went to the same house three weeks ago and didn’t find anything. But this time it was sitting on a shelf, right out in the open. And when I went to the owner, he couldn’t remember owning it. He let me have it for free.’ Luna frowned. ‘I’ve been wondering if I just missed it, but I don’t see how. You can feel it, can’t you?’

I nodded. The cube radiated the distinct sense of otherness that all magic items do. This one wasn’t flashy, but it was strong; someone sensitive like Luna couldn’t have walked by without noticing. ‘Did you touch it?’

Luna nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘It glowed,’ Luna said. ‘Just for a second, and-’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I put it down, and it stopped. Then I wrapped it up and brought it here.’

The cube wasn’t glowing now so I focused on it and concentrated. All mages can see into the magical spectrum to some degree, but as a diviner I’m a lot better at it than most. A mage’s sight isn’t really sight — it’s more like a sixth sense — but the easiest way to interpret it is visually. It gives a sense of what the magic is, where it came from, and what it can do. If you’re skilled enough you can pick up the thoughts the magic was shaped out of and the kind of personality that created it. On a good day I can read an item’s whole history just from looking at it.

Today wasn’t one of those days. Not only could I not read the item’s aura, I couldn’t read any aura on it at all. Which made no sense, because there should have been at least one aura, namely Luna’s. To my eyes Luna glowed a clear silver, wisps of mist constantly drifting away and being renewed. A residue of it clung to everything she touched: her pack glowed silver, the scarf glowed silver, even the grass she was sitting on glowed silver. But the cube itself radiated nothing at all. The thing was like a black hole.

Left to their own devices magic items give off an aura, and the more powerful the item, the more powerful that aura is. This was why I’d had Luna bring the thing out here; if I’d tried to examine the cube in my shop I’d have had a hundred other auras distracting me. The park is a natural oasis, a kind of grounding circle which keeps other energies out, allowing me to concentrate on just one thing at a time. It’s possible to design an item so as to minimise its signature, but no matter how carefully you design a one-shot or a focus, something’s going to be visible. The only way to mask a magical aura completely is to do it actively, which left only one thing this could be. I dropped my concentration and looked up at Luna. ‘You’ve found something special, all right.’

‘Do you know what it is?’ Luna asked.

I shook my head and thought for a moment. ‘What happened when you touched it?’

‘The sparks inside lit up and it glowed. Just for a second. Then it went dark again.’ Luna seemed about to say something else, then stopped.

‘After that? Did it do anything else?’

‘Well …’ Luna hesitated. ‘It might be nothing.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It felt like it was looking at me. Even after I put it away. I know that sounds weird.’

I sat back against the tree, looking down at the cube. I didn’t like this at all. ‘Alex?’ Luna asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘This is going to be trouble.’

‘Why?’

I hesitated. I’d been teaching Luna about magic for a few months, but so far I’d avoided telling her much about the people who use it. I know Luna wants to be accepted into the magical world, and I also know there’s not much chance of it happening. Mage society is based on a hierarchy of power: the stronger your magic, the more status you have. Sensitives like Luna are second-class citizens at best.

‘Look, there’s a reason not many mages run shops,’ I said at last. ‘They’ve never bought in to the whole idea of yours and mine. A mage sees a magic item, his first reaction is to take it. Now, a minor item you can keep out of sight, but something really powerful … that’s different. Any mage who finds out about this thing is going to be willing to take time off his schedule and track you down to take it, and he might not be gentle about how. Just owning a major item is dangerous.’