Scarred

By Shayla Morgansen

Scarred is an urban fantasy novel and is book two in The Elm Stone Saga. Sometimes we survive unscathed, Sometimes we are left scarred. Following an unforeseen attack, the White Elm council is depleted but even more determined to find and prosecute their former member, Lisandro, and his followers. Suggestions of a spy within the council ranks, h

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ouroborus Book Services
• Release date: Aug 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9780994589750

Shayla Morgansen

Hi! I'm Shayla, and making stories is the basis of everything I love and do. I write lengthy books about magical happenings in ordinary places, and the supernatural crossing paths with the everyday. My favourite themes to explore in these fantasy story worlds are interdependency, found families, us-against-the-world, and a good helping of angst.At home in Brisbane, I'm a wife, a happy little hermit, and a mum to our two adorable white cats. In my working life, I have been a schoolteacher, an editor, an assistant publisher and a lecturer.

Book preview

Scarred

Copyright © 2015 Shayla Morgansen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978-0-9945897-5-0 (e-book)

Published by Ouroborus Book Services

www.ouroborusbooks.com

PROLOGUE

The landing was perfectly timed and executed. Jackson and his eight men each stepped out of the wormholes they had used to travel here, to this quiet street in Italy, and Jackson sealed off their exit points with magic. Normally he wouldn’t have bothered but tonight’s raid was Lisandro’s brainchild and this cautiousness was a direct request of his. And what Lisandro requested was what came to be, inevitably, so here Jackson was, carrying out Lisandro’s carefully laid-out plans.

The men he’d been assigned were brutes; scum and low-lives the upstanding villain Lisandro preferred not to associate himself with, but who were too strong and efficient to simply not have on board. Jackson was glad to have them. This team was his, and they were so starkly different from the team he’d been part of when he was a councillor for the White Elm. This team respected him and what he had to offer. This team got stuff done, without spending weeks or months in talks, deliberating the ethical, socio-political and whatever other ramifications of action. This team was a force to be reckoned with, and best of all, this team listened to Jackson.

The White Elm had never done much of that. If they had, he might not now be a fugitive and outcast from their ranks, and he might not now be on his way to attack the home of one of the council’s newest members.

‘Suit up,’ Jackson hissed at them, jerking his head at the furthest of his men to gesture him closer. Cloaking spells were most effective over a small area, so the closer the nine stayed together the more powerful the spell would be. As the most powerful sorcerer present – and they knew it, he thought smugly – Jackson was the one to cast the cloak over them. An invisible blanket of magic settled over the group. For them, wearing the cloak spell was almost unnoticed. They couldn’t feel it; it didn’t affect their vision, their hearing or their extended magical senses; it didn’t slow their motions or impede them in any way. However, for anyone outside of the cloak, such as a nosy neighbour peeking out their window into the street, where moments ago there stood a bunch of strange men, there was now nothing to be seen except empty air. For any sorcerer nearby, accustomed to being able to sense the presence of approaching living things, where moments ago there was the distinct sense of life, of energy, of emotion, of intention and thought, there was now only void. The cloak redirected the senses around those hidden beneath it, and that was exactly the cover Jackson and his team required.

The target was not a large or stately home, but it was the address the informant had provided, and inside the small, tidy cottage near the top of the street Jackson could feel several powerful magical presences. The one he was most interested in, he couldn’t feel, but that did not mean she wasn’t there. He grinned at the thought. He didn’t like for anyone to be better at things than he was, but there was no denying that Emmanuelle Saint Clair of the White Elm was the best at wards and cloaking spells.

The nine drew knives as they approached the home as a group. Knives for sorcerers were more than tools for cutting the physical; pointed and precise, often they could be more useful than wands for directing magic. Jackson paused ahead of the group and extended a hand slowly. Invisible, almost undetectable, a delicate web of protective energy lay over this house. To pass through it would trigger a mental alert in the mind of the spell’s creator. The people inside were strong and of unknown competence – the less warning they received of Jackson’s arrival, the better.

Beneath Jackson’s hand, a silvery strand of energy, as thin and indistinct as a spider’s web, quivered into visibility: a very basic ward. Blade glowing with his own power and intent, Jackson drew his knife across the strand. It resisted destruction, as all things do, but soon gave. The knife went through, severing it cleanly. The taut line of magic snapped and pinged apart with a spark of pale light, but the remainder of the net remained intact. The group waited in tense silence – would the inhabitants notice? How in-tune was the young councillor to her spells? – but there was no energetic shift inside the house to denote an increase in activity or anxiety.

‘Keep outside this radius,’ Jackson instructed his team in a low voice. He pointed his knife at the perimeter of the spell’s reach – at his will, dozens of the same silvery strands lit up faintly, stretching up into a dome over the cottage’s roof. ‘No rushing. No mistakes. Anyone who screws this up is staying behind to answer to the council when their real warriors show up.’

Because though Jackson liked to sneer at the mere mention of his former brotherhood, the fact remained that their collective and individual might was both impressive and formidable. The White Elm allowed onto their council only the best and brightest thirteen of the world’s sorcerers: Seers who knew too much of the future, Displacers who could teleport through space on a whim, Healers who could mend most any wound, Crafters who could twist and manipulate the very essence of magic, Telepaths who could hear the thoughts of those around them, scriers (too busy being stubborn and self-righteous to allocate themselves a capital letter) who could see what was happening anywhere in the world... It was probable that right now, the White Elm’s duo of scriers, Qasim and Renatus, were becoming aware of this very event, and it was only a matter of time before they arrived.

Jackson would prefer not to cross paths with either of them, if possible. He’d woven wards into his cloaking spell that would postpone the moment when these events were brought to the scriers’ attention, but Fate, unfortunately, worked for scriers, not for Crafters like Jackson. Sooner rather than later that ward would break and the countdown to confrontation with the White Elm would begin.

Jackson wanted to be gone, with the prizes he was sent for, by that time.

The team moved slowly but efficiently around the cottage, stepping carefully over rows of vegetables in the garden and low fences separating properties. Each strand was cut with care, but as more came away, the quicker the process became. The remaining strands glowed much more brightly, forced to carry more power than when other parts of the net had been in place to share the load of protecting the house, and became much easier to spot and sever.

Jackson’s men gathered at the front of the house around the final strand. Its light was so bright it made Jackson squint. Nico, a stocky Austrian wanted by the mortal law in several European nations for violent assaults in bars and nightclubs, carved his silver-bright blade back and forth across the strand of magic while the others held their breath in apprehension and excitement.

‘Only one to go and they haven’t even noticed?’ Saul breathed, eyes manic. Jackson looked at him sidelong and said nothing. Bad eggs occurred in all types, both magical and mortal. Saul had come into Lisandro’s employ – and subsequently shifted into Jackson’s taskforce almost immediately – when his human trafficking enterprise had been uncovered and dismantled by Interpol, and the White Elm had rejected his pleas for sanctuary. The government of the magical world took a similar stance on human rights as did the governments of mortal society, and had attempted to apprehend Saul, with the intention of either providing him, gift-wrapped and powerless, to the police, or of imprisoning him themselves in their prison in Valero. With nowhere left to turn, Saul had sought out Lisandro, a former authority within the White Elm and a political revolutionary, and taken refuge among the ranks of Magnus Moira, Lisandro’s new but quickly growing movement against the White Elm council’s leadership.

Jackson really didn’t care what Saul or the others had done before they came to work under him, but Lisandro had made his opinions on Saul’s history very clear to Jackson. ‘If it happens that you lose one, or need to leave one behind,’ he’d said, ‘don’t stress too much if it’s him.’

A spell is a near-living thing, almost sentient – it wants to endure. As Nico drew his knife carefully across the strand of magic defending the cottage, the spell shuddered and grew brighter, strengthening its now-weak point of attack.

‘Why is it taking so long?’ someone hissed, bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement. Jackson irritably caught him across the chest with one of his gloved hands, stilling his annoying motion.

‘If they haven’t noticed yet, rushing will only tip them off,’ he whispered back. He looked back at the trembling strand of magic, felt the rise in energy all around him as the spell prepared to break and his men prepared to take the house. ‘Look alive, boys.’

A bright spark signalled the end of the ward; the spell gave under the pressure of Nico’s knife and power, and the nine grinned. There was nothing more to be said. They rushed at the cottage. Nico traded his knife for the wand in his coat pocket, and blasted the door open.

They had a weapon to steal and a war to ignite.

chap1 copy

As I had expected, the door opened for me, and I walked into the study. Renatus, my headmaster and the Dark Keeper of the White Elm council, was at his desk, a pile of letters, forms and documents either side of him.

‘You’re here,’ he noted. Tonight was the last of the nightly detentions he’d issued me three weeks ago when I’d accidentally upset one of his colleagues, Qasim, my scrying teacher. Far from being the dull punishments I was sure Qasim hoped them to be, my evenings with Renatus had been enlightening and interesting. ‘I wasn’t sure.’

‘I had to. We have stuff to talk about, I think.’

Understatement of the year. We’d talked a lot yesterday, but now there was new stuff. There was always so much stuff. There was the freaky half-imagined vision of a blood-soaked girl in the orchard at the back of Renatus’s property. There was my stupid friend Sterling’s demand that I flush my dignity to investigate whether her pathetic infatuation with the headmaster was reciprocated. There was the list I’d pulled off the door on my way in, which I held in my hand but I’d still not bothered to look at. Plus there was always something else, something unexpected, whenever I talked with Renatus.

‘I think you’re right.’ He held my gaze as he lifted a typed letter from the top of a very tall pile of the same. He was pretty much the most attractive human being I’d ever met, but the more I got to know him, the less I noticed. The less important it seemed, compared with all the other mosts I found him to be. The most powerful. The most abrupt. The most complicated. The most broken. ‘About a few things.’ He broke eye contact to look down at the letter as he signed it. ‘You can tell Sterling Adams that it isn’t going to happen.’

I sighed and nodded, relieved that I’d been spared having to ask that, but only felt marginally better. I was on edge, shifty, uncomfortable, and I found myself pacing. My relatively youthful headmaster eyed the list in my hand but did not bring it up.

‘Renatus,’ I said, trying to sound much more casual than I looked or felt and much less crazy than I was probably about to appear, ‘are ghosts real?’

It sounded stupid in my head and even stupider out loud, especially considering I was quite sure I either knew the answer or at least knew what my truth, my belief on the topic, was. But somehow, in Renatus’s office, stupid questions had a way of feeling much less stupid. Maybe it was the way my headmaster never treated my questions like they were stupid but instead gave me insightful and thought-provoking responses. It was this ability of his, I thought, that had made my time spent in detention worthwhile and intriguing. At first he’d loaned me books to read every night; later we’d gotten to talking while I helped with some of the more mundane aspects of his job, like sealing envelopes.

And our conversations had yielded some remarkable insights. Despite being two very different people – he a super-powerful, painfully wealthy, twenty-something professional warrior for an elite council of sorcerers, me an eccentric, naive seventeen-year-old girl with little direction in life and no impressive accomplishments or talents to my name – we’d learnt that we in fact shared an unlikely tragic history.

We’d discussed this in depth last night, and Renatus had said I didn’t need to come to this last session, that I’d given enough time yesterday, but things had transpired since that had driven me here.

Now he was staring at me, surprised by my question. I might have felt smug at any other time, since he struck me as someone difficult to surprise, but tonight I was too jumpy following my strange experience out on the estate.

‘No, they’re not. What made you ask that?’ he said finally, strikingly violet eyes flickering critically over the space around me. My aura. Despite his age, Renatus was a very high-level member of the White Elm council – the best of the best of sorcerers, and our people’s government. Observing a person’s mood and emotions from their energy field was no effort at all to someone like him. For a newbie student like me, it was all part of The Dream, the hope that one day I’d possess those kinds of automatic skills and be half as awesome as he and his colleagues were.

‘Something weird happened,’ I said, exercising what passed for self-control in my books and not just blurting it out. Last night’s aborted conversation came to mind and stilled my tongue. This was my teacher, not my friend or parent. ‘Something...’ Black, white and red. In the orchard. Quite clear. ‘Indistinct. I don’t know. I probably imagined it.’

While I spoke, Renatus slipped the now-folded letter into an envelope and sealed it with the White Elm’s stamp. But questions and confusions bubbled away beneath my skin. I was sure Renatus could hear them. He possessed a not-always-welcome ability to overhear my wonderings and my thought trains, and often he would respond to my thoughts as though I’d spoken them aloud. Now he looked up at me sharply, and I knew I’d been unable to keep my thoughts to myself. As usual.

‘Aristea,’ he said seriously. ‘What did you see?’

‘A girl,’ I burst out, glad I could share with someone. None of my friends would have understood. ‘Or at least I think I did. I was waiting for a sign, like you said, and there was this girl, for just a tiny wee second, standing in the orchard, and she had white skin, long black hair and she was covered in blood-’

‘Stop.’ Renatus held up a hand to punctuate his forceful word. My description had quickly drained his already-pale face of blood, making him practically as white as the imagined girl. His silky black hair, worn long, and his smooth, symmetrical features – the picture of human beauty – could be likened to my vision, too, and I realised with a start both why he was getting upset and why I was drawing connections between his face and the girl’s.

‘Oh.’ Last night’s lengthy discussion had come after our conversation had accidentally stumbled across Renatus’s deepest heartbreak, and it had been revealed to me that his beloved sister had died here seven years previously. And that he’d never gotten over it. And that I reminded him of her. And that she’d looked just like him. But she was very dead and very gone. ‘You just told me ghosts aren’t real, though.’

‘They’re not,’ he said, frowning, clearly not liking this conversation. We’d come a long way in three weeks, from speaking very delicately and politely about inconsequential things to now, talking quite openly about our beliefs, histories, fears and losses. ‘You must have tapped into a trace leftover from when Ana was alive.’ An energetic footprint that lingers on the Fabric of the universe after events of significance, that can be tapped into by a scrier, like myself. ‘I’d rather not discuss it tonight, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I agreed immediately, not wanting to upset him like I did yesterday when I forced the issue. I sat down quickly in my usual seat opposite him at his desk and tried to paste a look of acceptance onto my face, and to emulate these feelings at the same time. Curiosity could wait. I laid the list I came in with across my lap and looked at the envelope in front of Renatus, expectant. ‘What can I do?’

I felt like I was learning to read him much better, the more time I spent with him. Renatus was the quiet, mysterious type. I’d never seen him smiling, and his expression didn’t tend to change much, but his eyes – if you were looking – often betrayed his emotional reactions. He pushed the envelope to me without a word, without any expression, but in his eyes I read his gratefulness for my discretion.

I fell easily into the routine of sealing envelopes, stamping the back, copying name and address onto the front, and ruling a line through the names on the list. I’d been helping with these kinds of ordinary tasks for weeks, and normally we’d talk, too. Tonight Renatus stayed silent. Yesterday we’d reached a strange new place in our student-headmaster relationship and agreed to be open with one another, to be allowed to ask the other anything in exchange for the same in return, and for the right to simply decline to answer if we chose. I was glad of this; he was intriguing, certainly, on a personal level, but he was also a treasure trove of information on the magical world that I wanted unlimited access to. I really admired and respected him, and despite not knowing him all that well yet and despite that most people seemed to find him abrupt and unsettling, I felt comfortable around him. Like I used to feel around my brother, before his death many years before.

Renatus’s handwriting was neat and spidery, much neater and nicer than mine, but I came across a name I wasn’t sure of. A letter in the middle was smudged. I squinted and tilted the page to no avail. I turned the paper so Renatus could see.

‘Is this an i or an l?’ I asked, pointing. I looked up at him when we didn’t lean forward to check.

He never answered. His eyes had slipped out of focus and a frown of concern formed. My interest in the envelope task gave way to my interest in his behaviour. He was scrying. He had the skill and talent necessary to be able to remotely view past and present events without even trying. A scrier myself (though embarrassingly less knowledgeable and skilled) I hoped to one day be able to do this, but for now I had only my less-extraordinary means of accessing the same visions. I remembered the night he’d postponed my first detention. He’d touched my hand to get my attention and I’d somehow witnessed a troublesome situation occurring elsewhere, like watching a DVD inside my head. Was something terrible happening again? Without pausing to think about it, I reached across the desk and touched the back of his wrist.

A small, homely cottage in Italy with neat little gardens... Nine men, led by a tall sorcerer with rich, dark skin, use glowing knives to carefully carve at the air around the property... The resistance against one knife gives, and a spark in the air indicates the destruction of the spell... ‘Only one to go and they haven’t even noticed?’... They gather behind a stocky man, watching eagerly as his knife, silver-bright with his own power, cuts through the last strand of magic guarding the house...‘Why is it taking so long?’... ‘If they haven’t noticed yet, rushing will only tip them off.’... A spark as the magic snaps... Nine bright grins... No longer needing to sneak, they rush forward... Someone exchanges his knife for a wand and casts a spell to blast the door inward...

The images stopped abruptly when Renatus flinched away from my touch, apparently having just realised what I was doing. We’d realised three weeks ago that I was able to channel visions from him through touch – it had not been established whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked worriedly, not caring if he was angry with me for spying. He ignored my question.

‘You probably don’t want to see this,’ he told me, giving me a meaningful look. ‘It’s Jackson, sent by Lisandro.’ He placed his hand back on the desktop as his focus slipped again. I hesitated – his words and actions seemed contradictory – but, taking his action as an invitation, I touched my fingertips to his knuckles, and the stream of images began again.

Inside the cottage now, a joint kitchenette, dining and lounge room with a freestanding bench and a small dining table defining the areas... The nine men crowding at the door, weapons grasped tightly in heavy hands... Jackson at the front... Aubrey and Teresa standing by the table... Aubrey’s wand is out, prepared... ‘She’s not here.’... Jackson scoffs, disbelieving, and a blaze of flame shoots between his wand point and the councillors... The flame glances off an opalescent wall, deflecting into the kitchen... A small cupboard door is blasted from its hinges... A flicker of fear from unseen parties...‘See that ward? Did you think I wouldn’t recognise her work? It’s Emmanuelle’s – where is she?’... Another faint pulse of nervousness, this time from several people... ‘She’s not here. She’s gone.’... ‘I don’t think so. I know you’re in here somewhere, darling. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again.’...

This time, the vision faded before I broke the connection, and I became aware of the office once again. My emotions were a mess, as usual. What was going on? What was Jackson going to do? Was this Lisandro’s doing? I’d never met the White Elm’s former brother-turned-nemesis, but I knew enough to be at least distantly afraid of him. He’d betrayed his council and killed his own friend. I didn’t know what else he was capable of. What was going to happen to Aubrey and Teresa, two of Renatus’s more junior colleagues? Emmanuelle, my favourite councillor and possibly Renatus’s only friend – she had been mentioned, but was she alright? I pulled my hand back as Renatus stood, muttering Emmanuelle’s name softly.

‘Is she there?’ I asked, watching him. He pushed his chair back and opened the smoky-glassed cabinet behind the desk.

‘You tell me,’ he responded, pocketing several small items. I recognised the box that held the pendant he’d loaned me to stop my Haunting. ‘It’s where I sent her.’

I wondered how I was meant to know whether or not Emmanuelle was in that cottage. I hadn’t seen or heard her. In my mind I sifted through the various images, sounds and feelings I’d channelled before I understood. Renatus didn’t feel anything when he scried. I, on the other hand, was an Empath: I felt things much more intensely than other people, and I could sense feelings and motivations through scried visions. He hadn’t felt that spark of fear when the door had fallen – that fear of being struck, of being discovered – nor when Jackson had asked after Emmanuelle.

My instincts told me that Emmanuelle was there, hidden somewhere, somehow, and that I’d felt the feelings of others, too.

‘I think she is,’ I said finally, doubtful. ‘I think she’s hidden with someone else.’

‘Jadon should be there, too,’ Renatus said, closing the cabinet and turning back to me. ‘They are under attack. Jackson is extremely dangerous. He could hurt or kill them.’ His gaze flickered from my face to the door and back again.

‘What does he want?’ I asked, willing myself not to panic. I wasn’t even there, or even connected to the situation, but scrying it and feeling what the people there felt made it seem close to me. I got to my feet, catching the sheet of paper that fell from my lap.

‘Emmanuelle has the White Elm’s ring,’ Renatus said, waving a hand at his door. I moved over as it began to open. ‘She’s calling for me to help.’

Telepathically, of course, not with phones. I wasn’t even sure the White Elm used phones.

I’d forgotten my ghostly encounter in the orchard but now I had other things swirling about my mind as I went to the door. Sterling would ask why I was back so early, she’d ask what Renatus had said, I’d have to tell her tough luck... I was lost in my disordered thoughts of Sterling, Emmanuelle and Jackson, so I passed Renatus and reached the door before I realised that I was still holding the list of potential apprentices. That would have been the second time I’d walked out of the office with it in an emergency evacuation. I went to hand it back but saw that it had changed.

Everybody’s name had a neat line drawn through it – except mine. I looked up at Renatus as he approached me. I was more confused now than I had been all night. Did this mean…? What?

‘Are you coming?’ Renatus asked, his tone telling me that there was no trick. I stared for a moment, uncertain. He grasped my wrist, and the images took over once again.

Teresa pulls Aubrey backwards a step... Aubrey’s spell hits a man in the neck... The man falls, shouting, hurting... Aubrey’s next spell is aimed at Jackson but is deflected... It strikes Aubrey in the stomach... Aubrey is on his knees, gasping, pain written across his face and his hands clenched... ‘Just give me the ring, pretty thing…’ Two more spells hit Aubrey and he is lying on the floor... Teresa steps over his motionless form... ‘Stop. He’s not a threat.’... ‘I know’...

Renatus released me. I gasped, overwhelmed. Aubrey had been both surprised and terrified by the realisation that his spell had backfired. For one intense second that fear had been all I’d known.

‘He’s hurt,’ I said, frightened. Was he alive?

‘Are you coming?’ Renatus asked again, tensely. I knew there was no question at all, really.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said, nodding quickly. Renatus’s hand closed around my upper arm and he walked forwards, into the wall opposite the office door, pulling me along. I instinctively paused before any of my body could hit the wallpaper, but he had not stopped, and I found that when my elbow struck the wall, I felt nothing. In fact, my elbow had hit nothing, and when the rest of me followed, forcibly, I discovered why.

I melted through the wall as though it did not exist, except to my eyes, and the world around me became dark and cool. I blinked and continued to walk forwards into my new surroundings. The hallway had been completely replaced by the dim, spacious underground kitchen. There were no windows, and the floor, walls and ceilings were all made from cold stone. The oven was large and old-fashioned, and pots and pans hung above every bench top. A few of the house’s staff were still here, washing up the cutlery and crockery used at dinner. They all glanced over with mild interest as Renatus dragged me across the room and up a small flight of stone steps, but nobody looked too surprised to see him randomly appearing out of a wall with a teenager in tow. Some sort of portal? To save the time that would have been wasted on stairs in this huge, four-storey estate home.

He pushed open the heavy wooden door at the top of the steps and strode out of the kitchen. This new room was better lit, I saw, as we moved quickly around the staircase and into the entry hall. Our footsteps echoed in the large empty space, faster and more urgent now than before. I had to extend my stride to keep up with his. We had almost reached the door when I heard a third set of footsteps echoing from the foot of the stairs, and both Renatus and I glanced back just as the person spoke.

‘Renatus!’ It was Qasim. Renatus stopped immediately before the doors, which were still closed, but didn’t release his tight grip on my arm.

‘Italy,’ Renatus called across the space, waiting for the older scrier to catch up. ‘Most of the council will meet us there. Somebody needs to stay.’

‘Susannah has agreed to stay behind,’ Qasim said, speaking to Renatus but watching me. The older sorcerer from Saudi Arabia both frightened and interested me. He was tall, more powerfully built than Renatus, around fifty years of age, with a neat beard and a tattoo on his left wrist. He had an expression and an air that you simply did not mess with. He did not like me: he’d made this very clear. I wasn’t sure yet, but I didn’t think I liked him much, either. Our interactions were usually intense, and often negative. He’d tried to have me expelled a month ago – I’d been lucky to learn that my enrolment at the White Elm’s Academy was subject to Renatus’s whim, essentially, and I’d gotten off with a warning and a stack of detentions. ‘Where do you think you are going, Aristea?’

I didn’t know exactly, only the country, and I wasn’t sure how to answer, because his tone implied that I was about to be in a great deal of trouble. Thankfully, Renatus spoke for me.

‘She’s coming with us,’ he told Qasim. The Scrier blinked, apparently wondering whether he’d heard correctly.

‘She’s what?’

‘She’s coming.’ Renatus, in my experience, despite his comparative youth, never seemed afraid of putting his foot down with the White Elm’s Scrier.

‘What are you talking about?’ Qasim demanded, emanating frustration, looking between us. ‘She isn’t going anywhere. You can’t take a student out of the grounds.’

‘I think you’ll find I can,’ Renatus answered, his tone calm and cool. I wondered whether he could feel my arm trembling in his grasp – Qasim’s mood was darkening, becoming ugly and angry, and it scared me.

‘I think you’ll find it difficult pulling the headmaster card this time. Nowhere did Angela Byrne sign to give you permission as headmaster to take her sister out of the country, for any reason.’

A brief image of my sister appeared at the front of my mind. What would she say if she were here?

‘The Academy’s headmaster has no such right over our students; in that, you are correct,’ Renatus agreed. I glanced between them as Renatus went on. ‘I am exercising my rights as master, granted by the old laws, which even our council cannot overrule.’

‘As master?’ Qasim repeated, slowly. His dark eyes moved between my face and Renatus’s.

‘That’s right,’ Renatus confirmed. ‘Aristea is my apprentice.’

The words rang in my head. Aristea is my apprentice. He chose me, out of a whole host of better students. I was still clutching the list that confirmed it. Qasim was silent for a long time, his emotions bubbling like boiling water as he turned this information over in his head until it made sense. When it did, he turned to me suddenly, his hand snatching for mine. His fingers closed over my left wrist before I could move away, and though I instinctively tried to wrench it back, he was much too strong.

‘Hey,’ I said, but he ignored me. I expected him to take the list from me again. He did not even notice I held it. He twisted my hand uncomfortably so that the smooth underside of my wrist was facing upwards. He smirked at Renatus, relaxing slightly.

‘Unmarked,’ he commented. ‘She’s not yours yet.’

‘The old laws accept a verbal contract as sufficient until the ceremony at the first full moon,’ Renatus disagreed, plucking the list from my hand and pocketing it. He looked to me as Qasim relaxed his grip. ‘Aristea, I wish to take you as my apprentice, for life. Do you consent to this?’

‘Let her go,’ Qasim snarled, grabbing my wrist again and yanking me free of Renatus’s grip; the Dark Keeper did as he was told. ‘You won’t control her answers. Aristea,’ the Scrier said, taking my shoulders and turning me to face him, ‘you don’t understand what you are doing. If you agree, you are accepting a lifelong commitment. You are giving him access to your every thought; you are agreeing to a connection that will exist until one of you die. If you agree, you are agreeing to share your gifts, your power – do you understand that? You are agreeing to belong to him, to do as he asks, share his work, and one day to take his place on the White Elm. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he does. You don’t understand what you are doing.’

It took me a moment to process all of this. What he’d just described was basically what I’d read in Renatus’s books. Qasim was trying to make it sound like a curse, but what difference did it make? Renatus would see into my mind whether I let him or not, and it would not surprise me if he had the power to borrow magic from those around him regardless of whether they were connected to him. By coming to this school, I had known that one day I might be asked to work with the White Elm. It was not a curse; it was a dream come true. My sister would not be angry with me for agreeing. She would be so, so proud that I had been chosen over everyone else.

My whole family would have been proud of me to agree to serve the White Elm.

I was proud of me right now.

I lightly shrugged Qasim’s hands from my shoulders and looked back at Renatus. My master, I thought vaguely, convinced that I was making the right choice.

‘I understand what it means,’ I said, hoping I was telling the truth. ‘I accept.’

I felt Renatus’s relief; apparently, he had not been sure whether I would say that.

‘You’re not prepared,’ Qasim said, a note of desperation in his voice.

‘She has read each of the texts required of any apprentice,’ Renatus said, an arm appearing around my shoulders and steering me towards the door, which was opening of its own accord. ‘She read them in her detentions. Can we go? Aubrey and Teresa are down. Jadon and Emmanuelle need us.’

Qasim hesitated as the door opened. He was not happy with the situation, but seemed to have run out of excuses. His sense of duty overpowered his anger and he nodded once, tensely.

‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he warned Renatus, shoving past him to exit first. He was almost visibly seething with fury. Renatus pushed me through the door and we followed Qasim across the lawn, keeping a fast pace.

No one said anything until we reached the gates, which, like all the doors here, opened at a gesture from Renatus. The White Elm’s Academy used for its campus Renatus’s old family home and the whole place seemed sensitive to his whims. I followed the two scriers out. I normally would have noticed the cold air or the clear, starry sky, but now I felt somewhat numb. My thoughts were whirling around in my brain, but kept coming back to a few key sentences – Renatus picked me. I am his apprentice. Several of the White Elm’s councillors are in danger and Renatus and Qasim are going to help, and I will... what? Stand and watch?

What did Renatus expect for me to be able to do?

‘Have you been to Teresa’s before?’ Renatus asked of Qasim when we passed through the gates. The Scrier, the only one of our class who got to use a capital letter, shook his head, coming to a stop several metres away. This was where Angela had parked when she’d dropped me off. Had that really been only five and a half weeks ago?

‘Elijah is there now; we can go to him,’ Qasim answered. He turned his dark glare on me, and I tried my best not to quail. ‘This may be a hostile situation. If you become endangered, you will hide and build your wards around yourself. You will stay by Renatus’s side at all times; you will not wander off alone. If you become separated, find Lord Gawain and stay with him. Nobody else. Do you understand that?’

I nodded automatically, not really understanding at all why I couldn’t go to anyone else on the council. Renatus did not try to argue or contradict Qasim’s orders.

Renatus grabbed my arm again and I felt his power running through his being as he cast a spell I couldn’t see or understand. He pulled me with him as he took a step forward. For a moment I felt a strange resistance, as if I were in water, and then my foot landed on a solid paved road, my body followed and when my second foot followed the first, I was standing in an entirely new time zone.

I had Displaced. I was in Italy. It was warmer here, though not quite warm. The winding street I stood in rose before me with the hill it was built on, and cute cottages lined it, spaced apart to give generous garden and lawn areas to each.

It was as I had seen.

There was a commotion behind us. Qasim appeared beside me and took off down the hill. Reminding me quietly to stay by his side, Renatus followed at a jog, and I tried to keep pace. In the dimly lit street I could see several people spill out of the house from Renatus’s vision. I could hear voices; they were drowned out by a sharp psshhh sound, like a rocket flying past. I ducked and slowed, but nothing happened and the scriers didn’t even miss a step. When I straightened I saw the small band of men dart between two houses and begin to disappear. I pointed, horrified as I noticed human forms slung over the shoulders of the bigger men.

‘Stop!’ Qasim shouted, and both he and Renatus did so, pulling wands from inside their coats and aiming them in the direction of the escaping attackers. Before they could do anything, the last man disappeared with a small female body. They were gone. 

Renatus swore loudly, and looked back for me. I caught up, wondering what the neighbours thought of all this noise. Nobody appeared in any of the other doorways and no windows suddenly brightened.

Further along the street, some more people appeared and began to enter the house behind those who had hurried out before. As we neared, the last of them turned and looked at us, hesitating only a moment before raising a hand in acknowledgement. The light from inside the house spilled through the open door onto his face, and I saw that it was Tian, another of the councillors and one of my teachers.

So the newcomers were White Elm. At least we were walking towards the good guys. I felt so disorientated by the suddenness of everything, our arrival here, the action...

We were nearly at the cottage of interest when I felt a flicker of emotion where those strangers had disappeared and stopped, grabbing for Renatus’s arm. Distantly, through him, I overheard some of what he was scrying: ‘He just took them, I don’t know why he would’… ‘Why didn’t he take you, too?’... ‘Teresa’s illusion saved us. She didn’t have time to guard herself and Aubrey’... ‘She was wearing one of the rings – what if it was the real one?’... ‘She’s the only one who would have known. I didn’t even bother to ask’... ‘How did they know where to find us?’

He stopped immediately at my touch, and even Qasim pulled up. I wasn’t sure at first whether I’d been right to stop them, because I couldn’t see anything in the shadows between the two houses, but I had felt something, not ten metres away.

‘What?’ Renatus asked, voice low. I slowly shook my head, unsure. There was nothing there – my eyes were very certain of that – but someone was exactly there, feeling apprehensive. The more I looked the more concern I felt. Not mine; someone else’s. Air didn’t have feelings so where were these reactions coming from? The unease built as I scanned and squinted and as my eyes slipped into the focus Glen had taught me...

The shadows remained dark but a small, blurry figure with thin blonde hair became apparent. His dark eyes were staring straight into mine. Where had he come from? He’d just shimmered into existence between those shadows.

‘Renatus!’ I stage-whispered, too scared to speak any louder as I pointed. He followed my gaze, and, without warning, he levelled his wand at the mostly-hidden figure and shot a sphere of fire the size of a tennis ball at his torso. It made a cracking sound like a gun and I leapt backwards in shock. The fireball travelled as fast as a bullet, too. On impact, the man became completely visible and his whole body caught alight, burning like he was bathed in petrol. He screamed, his agony and horror rolling from him like smoke, choking me as it hit me. I pressed my hands to my ears, terrified, hoping that by blocking the sound I could block the awful feelings.

He burned, and he burned, and it seemed he’d been burning forever, but it was only a few seconds before Tian came to his senses and ran over. He raised his sword, letting it fall through the air in a cutting motion, severing Renatus’s connection with the spell and extinguishing the flames.

‘Renatus, that’s a person,’ he snapped, shoving past us to tend to the man, who was by now lying curled on the lawn, moaning. ‘You could have killed him.’

You could have killed him. That’s a person. You could have killed him. I slowly lowered my hands from my ears but in their place I could feel the pounding of my pulse through the fine blood vessels.

What had I agreed to back at the house?

‘Whoops,’ Renatus responded, his tone sarcastic, as Emmanuelle, the council’s official Healer, arrived. Obviously drawn by the sudden fire and the scream, she hurried to Tian’s side to take over, and we followed her to watch. The White Elm’s swordsman immediately moved aside as she ran careful hands across burnt skin, millimetres from contact.

‘Second degree burns,’ she muttered, mostly to herself. For such a brief fire, the spell’s flames had done a lot of damage. I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the mess that was supposed to be a man. Much of the clothing had been burnt away. The skin was red and raw, peeling away in some places and shiny with blood in others. There didn’t seem to be a single patch of unharmed skin. What had Renatus done?

‘Nothing you can’t fix, of course,’ he said coolly, addressing Emmanuelle. She shot him an annoyed look before her eyelids slid shut and she ceased to move.

Others arrived and tense conversation began around me but I wasn’t listening. My attention was locked on Emmanuelle and the man from the shadows. His raw, blistery skin had repulsed me at first, but now it didn’t seem so bad. A skinless patch on the neck and including the ear still oozed blood; I looked elsewhere, watching Emmanuelle’s hands, which trembled just slightly but otherwise remained poised above the patient’s heart. The skin on his chest looked quite healthy, I thought, except for the blood on it, but the wounds were not apparent. Involuntarily, I looked back to the ear. To my surprise, there was no skin missing from the ear or the neck. Shiny, fresh new skin had replaced the wound. I looked back and forth across the man’s body, and before my very eyes, blood clotted and wounds closed up.

Less than thirty seconds and the man was essentially healed, his wounds patched up, his damaged skin regrowing. Emmanuelle opened her eyes and looked up.

‘He’s fine,’ she said, French accent affecting her English. ‘The shock of ‘is trauma and my healing should keep ‘im docile for a few hours at least. ‘is system doesn’t know what to think, and some of ‘is nerves are still rebuilding, so it will be a while before ‘e regains full awareness of ‘is body.’ She gave Renatus another look. ‘Not that I care in this case, but you ought to take more caution. Another few seconds and ‘e would ‘ave been dead.’

Renatus didn’t respond. I imagined he didn’t care either. He tossed a balled-up golden chain to Emmanuelle and she secured it around the patient’s shoulders.

His carelessness blew my mind. I’d assumed all along that he was someone not to be crossed, but I’d not expected...

‘We don’t even know if he was one of them,’ Qasim chastised.

‘Renatus just doesn’t give a flying fuck about anybody but himself,’ Jadon said, very coldly, ‘which is why he turned Teresa and Aubrey over to Jackson.’ Renatus only frowned as everyone else turned to him. Jadon carried on, asking, ‘Is there any point in telling you that Jackson just broke in while we were working on