Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) (5 page)

“Yeah, nine and ninety,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll manage to claim my service before all is said and done.”

The Trelking leaned forward, enough for me to see the smile cross his face. “Indeed,” he agreed. His face hardened, becoming sterner. “You are aware of your task, Escher. That has not changed.”

The Trelking was the only person I never corrected about my name. It wouldn’t have mattered with him, anyway. “Yeah, yeah. I’m to stop the Druist Mage, but you’ve got your daughter all set up to marry him, so maybe that’s not needed.”

“On the contrary, I would think it would matter to you greatly, especially now.” He hesitated, letting it sink in that he knew about us. “And the task is not stopping him. Before your service is over, you will kill the Druist Mage.”

“You called us here, Father. What is it you want?”

The Trelking took a step toward us. The gateway remained open behind him, now a gaping hole that appeared like a shimmering cloud against the darkness. Holding it open like that would take incredible power. When Devan and I had crossed, we’d only managed to keep it open for a few moments, long enough to get through, before it collapsed. Seeing him simply hold it open—and knowing how long he would have needed to hold it while waiting for us to reach him—told me as much about the depths of his power as anything. Had he wanted to kill or capture us both, we’d be gone.

“What I
want
is for your return. The arrangement remains intact, but it has taken much work to keep it that way. You don’t understand what you risk by your,” he paused and glanced over at me, “dalliance.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The Trelking considered our relationship nothing more than a dalliance, like we were in some sort of eighteenth-century romance. “Should I have asked permission first?” I asked. “I didn’t think you were so formal.” I steadied my voice. “Sire, may I have your permission to court your daughter?”

His eyes blinked. “No.”

“Well,” I started, turning to Devan, “I guess that answers that. I’m sorry, but we can’t go out. Your father won’t permit it.”

“Ollie,” Devan said softly.

Yeah, I was being an idiot again, and this time, right in front of the Trelking. I couldn’t help it. Her father terrified me, even when I knew he’d been helping me develop my skills. Now that he was here for a different reason, I couldn’t shake the fear rolling through me.

I forced myself to take a steadying breath and pushed away the terrified panic in the back of my mind. That would surface later, if we managed to survive. For now, I needed to keep my shit together. Not just for me, but for Devan.

“Why
are
you here?” I asked the Trelking. “Since crossing clearly isn’t a challenge for you, why wait until now? You must have known where we went, so why did you wait?”

“You think I knew that you returned to the place of your youth and chose to wait, risking the arrangement that has been made?”

The question had a strange weight to it. “Yeah,” I said. “I think you’ve known. So either you waited until after Adazi attacked or for the Nizashi disappeared, but I can’t tell which.”

His eyes tightened at the mention of his assassins, apparently aware of their demise. “What have you done with the other painter?”

The Trelking didn’t know what had happened to Nik. Maybe that was useful. “He’s contained.”

“He is a student of the Druist Mage. He will not remain contained for long.”

The Trelking had known about Nik. Of course he would. Why hadn’t he said anything? “Well, I used a device of my father’s to contain him, so I doubt very much that he’s going anywhere.”

He pressed on his staff and tipped it toward me. I tensed, pressing more of my will through the protective circle, half expecting him to surge his power through the staff. My only hope then would be for him to have spent too much energy maintaining the opening to the gateway. Even that wasn’t much of a hope when it came to the Trelking and his power.

But he didn’t. A surge of yellow light burst from the tip of the staff, glowing like a bright lantern suddenly turned on. Around us, I saw the other two shifters. Jakes, the largest of them, sat near the tree closest to the water. He barely moved as the light bloomed.

The light washed out and over us, flowing like a liquid as it rolled toward the trees, creating a wall of illumination around us, sealing us off from the shifters. I didn’t think there was anything Jakes would be able to do to cross through the barrier made by the Trelking.

So much for thinking that the shifters might be able to help if shit got real.

“Now,” the Trelking said, “we are free to speak.” He focused his attention on me. “You have my thanks for preventing the Druist apprentice from attacking me.”

The Trelking had even known about Nik’s plan. What
didn’t
he know about?

“No problem. I guess we can consider ourselves even then,” I said.

The Trelking smiled. “You would be wrong to believe I would change the terms of your service, but you have my gratitude, nonetheless.” He tilted his head. “You still have it, I presume?”

By
it
, he meant the cerys. “Yeah, I’ve still got it. It’s someplace safe.”

“Indeed,” he said. His eyes dipped down to my pocket. “You may keep it and have my permission to use it.”

That was unexpected. The cerys posed a certain risk for the Trelking, tying him to something physical. What reason would he have for letting me keep it? It could be that he hoped that power would allow me to kill the Druist Mage more easily, but I doubted that was his entire reason. I’d have to learn if using it tied me to the Trelking in any way.

“Then why are you here? If you wanted to claim De’avan,” I said, making a point of using her formal name, “you would have done so by now. I gather that you don’t want the arrangement any more than she does, so you’re not too upset that she’s here with me. So there must be another reason.”

I hope I gambled right with my assumption. The Trelking wanted to keep his power intact, but more than that, he wanted to keep his power
safe
. There were great enough threats to it on the other side of the Threshold that he felt the need to strike a bargain with the Druist Mage. A battle between the two of them would only be beneficial to the powers that he wanted to keep at bay.

“An interesting supposition, my Painter.”

I snorted. Even with that, the Trelking remained non-committal. “But an erroneous one, it appears. So, why?”

His eyes swept around him, as if piercing through the glowing light curtain he’d placed. Likely, he could see through it, able to see out and past the trees, and he turned toward Conlin. “This is a place of power. A place of the Elder.”

In the years that I’d known the Trelking, he had only mentioned my father once, and that had been when asking where I’d learned patterns. I always suspected that my father had been the reason he had kept me around as long as he had. Maybe it was partly about my mastery of the arcane patterns, but there had seemed to be another reason. With the Trelking, there was
always
another reason.

“You know him?” I asked.

The Trelking tipped his head. “Many know of the Elder. Few know him.”

“You’re not kidding there,” I said.

“He was tasked with protecting an object for me until such time that I would require it again.”

“Well, since he’s not here, I’ll take a message and get it to him when I see him next.”

“Yes, I am aware that the Elder has been absent for some time.”

Absent. That meant he probably really was dead. Devan squeezed my hand, but I couldn’t really say anything. For the last ten years, I had been working on the assumption that he had disappeared. From what I could tell, he had disappeared many times, reappearing each time. After learning about how powerful a painter he was, I wasn’t terribly surprised that he would disappear for stretches at a time like that. Even when he’d been in Arcanus, he hadn’t always been around, or available if he was. But the Trelking had prescience, the ability to
see
. If even he couldn’t tell me about my father, then maybe everyone who had been telling me that he was dead for all these years was right. Maybe what Jakes suspected was really true.

“If he’s gone, then I’m not sure I can help,” I said. “I’ve already proven that I’m not so much the expert on the Elder.”

The Trelking smiled at me. “On the contrary, I think you’ve shown that you
are
the expert on the Elder, as I believe you have now demonstrated several times. The item I require is a small box of shardstone. You will know it when you see it. Find the box, and you may use the cerys to summon me.”

“What makes you think I would search for something like that for you?”

The Trelking tipped his head and considered me. “You will find the box. And then I will tell you how to find your father. If you don’t, then De’avan returns with me.” He flashed a predatory smile, and then turned to Devan. “You will come to serve your people eventually. You can only fight for so long.”

T
he Trelking disappeared
through the gateway, and it closed with a surge of power and a
pop
. As it did, I released the energy I’d been holding and sagged to the ground. The sudden absence of light from the Trelking’s magic left everything in blinding darkness. My eyes rebelled against it, struggling against the night. The air held the undercurrent of the other side of the Threshold, a soft flower scent mixed with pine and a sweet scent I always figured came from the magic, but even that began to fade.

Devan crouched next to me, eyes filled with concern. “Ollie?”

“I’m fine,” I said. Both of us knew I wasn’t. And both of us knew that we’d be searching for the shardstone box, too. Only, I had no idea what shardstone was or where I’d find a box that my father had hidden. I didn’t recall seeing anything in the lower level of the shed, and there certainly wasn’t anything in the basement of the house. What other storehouse would he have?

She dropped to the ground next to me and took my hands. “You don’t have to do this for him.”

“But I do. If we don’t find whatever box he wants, he’s going to take you back.” Both of us knew that if her father decided to take her back across the Threshold, nothing either of us could do would stop him. “There’s something we’re not seeing. It’s not all about telling me about my father.”

That was the most troubling part of it. The Trelking had multiple motivations for everything that he did. For him to come across the Threshold, making a point of holding the gateway open while he waited for us, there had to be some other reason besides simply searching for the box. And his offer to help me with my father didn’t ring entirely true, not with what I knew of the Trelking.

It all left me feeling even more unsettled than I had been when we first followed Tom to the park.

When Devan didn’t say anything, I pulled her close. “Hey, I’m going to be with you. We’re not going to let him drag you back.”

She tried to force a smile. I could see the strain on her face as she did. “You know we can only do so much against him, Ollie. If he chooses that I should return, I’m not sure where we can go to keep me safe.”

I caught her eyes, and she didn’t look away. A surge of emotion came over me. I wouldn’t let anything happen to Devan again. I’d almost failed her twice already. “He’s weaker on this side. He must be, or he wouldn’t have kept the gateway open like that. As long as we stay away from him near crossings, we have a chance.”

I thought of the little sculpture of Nik. Had I even a fraction of the knowledge he’d acquired from the Druist Mage, I might have a chance at keeping her safe. More than simply keeping her away from the Druist, I had to keep her from her father, as well.

“Right. Because we’ve been so good about staying out of trouble on this side.”

“Not all of it has been my fault,” I said.

Devan started to say something and then paused, turning her eyes upward.

I looked to see Jakes standing above me. More like, looming above me. He’d shifted back into his human form and stood with his arms crossed over his chest, like some sort of shifter god. He studied me with a strange look of concern.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“For what?”

I tipped my head toward where the gateway had disappeared. “For the doorway. For him. I know you take your responsibility for keeping this place safe and protecting the doorways pretty seriously, but there’s not much you can do when he wants to come through.”

“There was a warning. We had enough time to ensure others did not cross.”

I wondered if Jakes meant hunters or something else. I hadn’t ever come across hunters on the other side in the Trelking’s realm, so I doubted the Trelking would let something like that slip by, but there didn’t seem any other reason for Jakes to fear other creatures crossing. If they came from the Trelking’s realm, they would have a signature that Devan would recognize.

“Did you hear any of that?” I asked.

Jakes shook his head. “He managed to shield you from us. I did not really expect him to allow us to do more than observe.”

I motioned to Devan, and she helped pull me to stand. I brushed the dirt and dust off my jeans and looked around. My eyes had started to adjust. Not enough for me to see well, but enough to see through the shadows around the park. The other shifters were gone, or at least hiding from me now. Was one always stationed by the doorways, or did they simply recognize—like Jakes had seemed to—when the doorways were used and opened?

I took a deep breath, focusing on where the doorway had been. “I haven’t asked you this before, Jakes. I know you know of the Trelking.” Jakes didn’t show any emotion. I hadn’t expected him to. “But had you seen him before?”

Jakes hesitated. “No. That was the first time I’ve encountered the Trelking.”

It was another piece to the puzzle. There were many, each difficult to put together. I didn’t know exactly why my father had chosen Conlin, or why the shifters made a point of working with him, but I was well aware of Jakes’s refusal to do anything that he considered going against the Trelking. Was it that he feared the Trelking, based solely on his reputation, or was there was some other reason?

“Pretty nice guy, isn’t he?” I shot Devan a look. She had remained mostly silent. It wasn’t like her, not around her father, but I think she worried about him trying to force her across the Threshold. Both of us knew we wouldn’t have been able to stop him if that’s what he wanted. Maybe stopping him wasn’t what we should be focused on. If we could stay away from him, at least away from his reach, we could buy time to learn, maybe even enough to keep him from forcing her to marry the Druist Mage.

“He is one of the Protariat. That does not require him to be a nice guy.”

I started to smile, thinking Jakes was making a dumb joke, before I realized that he was completely serious. “What’s the Protariat?”

“If you don’t know, then that’s not my place to answer.”

I snorted. Great, another freaking magical mystery, only this one was about the Trelking. It was one I might have to ignore. There was no way I was going to try to learn
more
about the Trelking. I needed to know how to stay away from him, and I needed to know about how to stop the Druist Mage. Anything other than that didn’t really matter.

“Why did the Trelking make the crossing?” Jakes asked.

I considered not answering. Maybe I could trade the reason why for more information, but seeing the way Jakes stared at me, the focused and intense expression on his face, made me decide it would be better if he simply knew. Devan and I needed Jakes on our side. “He wants me to find something my father protected for him.”

“The Elder held many things here.”

That was news to me. When Jakes had called my father the sort of magical defender of Conlin, I hadn’t realized that he meant it so literally. “Things required by the Protariat?” When Jakes didn’t answer, I smiled and tried a different tact. “Where did he keep things? Because what the Trelking asked about wasn’t in the shed or in the house.”

“Are you certain? There are hidden places that only the Elder would know.”

Yeah, of course there would be. The house was pretty clear. Reaching the basement had only required that I had gained the necessary skill with arcane patterns. The Elder hadn’t made it so difficult that the basement was off limits, not like some of the challenges he’d left around the city. Taylor had solved the mystery of the statues in the park, though Jakes had known about them—at least about the doorway buried in the park—without needing the book for answers. We’d learned of the shed only by chance. Without the golden key he’d left me, I wasn’t sure we would have discovered the shed. What else might be out there? The pattern Taylor had discovered in the trees was part of yet another mystery. I’m sure my father had other things scattered throughout Conlin, but they were probably too difficult for me to find, at least on my own.

“How many hidden places in Conlin do you know of?” I asked Jakes.

“I was never privy to that. My father knew the Elder, I only knew of him.”

And his father had died in the hunter attack. I wondered if he still held that against Taylor. Jakes never really made a point of saying it, but how could he not? Had Taylor
not
come to Conlin, and had she not attempted to open the doorway, the elder Jakes would still be alive. And then I could have some of the answers I needed.

But there was another person in Conlin who might know, the one person I really hadn’t taken the time to question. Tom had trained with my father. It would only make sense for him to know something about what my father might be hiding here, especially since the Elder had placed protections around the Rooster.

“I’m sorry about that, Jakes.”

“You don’t yet understand, but you will. We know the risks and take them willingly.” He turned so that his eyes scanned the area where the doorway had been. Without the Trelking having opened it, I’m not sure I would have known about this crossing. I knew of only two: the one where I’d originally ended up on the other side of the Threshold, and the one that Devan and I had used to return. I should have questioned why they both led to Conlin. “This is our task. We will continue to serve. Some will be lost, but if we do not adhere to our task, even more will be lost.”

I didn’t know enough about why the shifters had agreed to guard the doorways, but I knew enough to know that Jakes was right. If they didn’t stand watch, what else might cross over the Threshold? The Trelking was powerful, but there were other creatures nearly as powerful on the other side.

“There will come a time when you will need to choose, Morris. It’s a choice your father once made, and one he did as willingly as my father.”

I glanced at Devan. “I’m not the person you need,” I said, still not looking at Jakes. “I’ll do what I can while I’m here, but if the Trelking is right—and unfortunately, he usually is—I have a different task ahead of me.”

Jakes looked from me to Devan. I could tell from his expression that he didn’t know.

“He claims that before I complete my service to him, I’ll have killed the Druist Mage.” Jakes’s eyes twitched slightly. “Yeah, so you see, I’m not so certain you want someone like me watching over the city with you. From the sound of it, I might not be around for long.”

I grabbed Devan’s hand and pulled her with me. We left the area under the trees and headed back up the path and toward Big Red. At the top of the rise, I paused and looked back. Jakes was gone, but I saw a flash of golden eyes near the trees that told me the shifters still watched over the doorway. At least there was that.

T
he drive
back into Conlin passed in mostly silence. We reached the blacktop road again, and the moon peeked out from behind the clouds, enough to light our way back into the town. At the edge of town, I glanced over at the lighted welcome sign. Did it have the same patterns on it as the sign on the other end of town?

I slammed on the brakes and jerked the truck to the side of the road. Devan glanced over at me. “I’ll only be a minute,” I said as I climbed out of the truck.

Loose gravel crunched under my shoes as I made my way toward the sign. Made of brick with white lettering backlit by a soft yellow light, it spelled out “Welcome to Conlin.” The lettering on the sign on the other side of town was faded, but I had seen a series of patterns on it. At the time, I’d only commented on the fact that my father would take the time to place such patterns on a city sign. Now I wondered if there might have been more to it. Could there be something like the spiraling pattern of trees to the city welcome signs?

It wasn’t the best time to investigate. Without enough light, I couldn’t really see, not clearly enough to make out anything on the sign. What I could see didn’t look like there were any patterns made on it, not like the sign on the other side of town.

Devan came up next to me. “What are you looking for?”

I waved a hand at the sign. “My father.”

She laughed softly. “You think he’s the one welcoming us to Conlin?”

“When I was trying to find you, when Adazi had taken you, I noticed something about the welcome sign on the other side of town, on Highway 16. It had my father’s patterns on it.”

Devan nodded. The medallion on my chest went suddenly cold, and her skin glowed with a soft white light, enough for me to see. I leaned over and gave her a quick kiss, not able to help myself. She looked damn cute when she was all magical like that. She smiled, and we walked around the front of the sign, looking for patterns, or something, that would give an indication that my father had been here. I didn’t see anything. We went around to the back and stopped. I didn’t see anything there, either.

Devan started laughing. “Damn.”

“What is it?”

She pointed to the sign. I didn’t see what she saw so easily, since her nighttime vision was so much better than mine.

“I’ve got to admit that the Elder is pretty clever,” she said.

She tapped on a few of the bricks, and as she did, I realized just what it was that she saw. There, outlined in the bricks, was a pattern. It was subtle enough that I wouldn’t have found it had Devan not pointed it out. It wasn’t that the bricks were different colors. They might have been shaded a little differently than the others, but not so that you’d notice. It was more about the way they were set. Only the pattern bricks were on end, forming a triangle, with one of the tips anchoring into the ground. I traced my finger around it and shook my head.

“One of these days, I’m going to learn even a half of what he knows.”

“Then you’ll end up making creepy statues in parks and hiding doorways across the Threshold. I’m not sure I’d like that guy.”

I tried remembering what I could of the other sign, thinking they had to connect somehow. Conlin’s main thoroughfares were perfectly laid out in a compass pattern, heading either north and south, or east and west. A few angled off, but the main roads followed the compass pretty exactly. “I’m going to have to go back and see what he put on that sign,” I said to Devan. “For now, I want to get back to town and stop at the Rooster. Tom knows more than he’s shared.”