Mörderin

Chapter 3

“Okay, so what you’re saying is that there are portals, like ours, that are created and some that are naturally occurring?” I said, squinting at the words in the book on the table in front of me.

“Yes, exactly,” my mother agreed.

“And they go to different places?”

She nodded. “This is the list of the known portals here that terminate in your world.”

There were twenty or so places listed, with the locations on this world to the left and their corresponding locations on my world to the right. “But Daria is on a completely different world?”

Mom smiled and reached across to turn the page. “Yes, there are only two known portals between here and there, however. The one was only documented when I came back through it.”

“Cambious told me that they are often in out-of-the-way places, sort of making you work to get to them?”

She nodded again. “Most of them are, yes. Then there’s the world where Daria is right now. They have a central location where eight portals all converge from eight different worlds.”

“Okay. I can accept that. I think.” I rubbed my eyes and sorted through the information I had already absorbed. Mom was ready to leave to go to Daria, but she wanted me to have a little more than theoretical knowledge. “So, the magic that creates these portals is what, exactly?”

She paced around me before coming back to the book on the table. “Well, it depends on the witches that cast it, largely. For example, our portal was created with a combination of opening, traveling, and destination magic several centuries ago. It took a coven of thirteen here, plus three on the other side.”

“That must have been fun to coordinate,” I muttered, already rejecting the idea of the math that would have been involved. “What makes the natural ones?” I could feel myself frowning and rubbed a hand over my forehead.

“No one knows, exactly. They do seem to happen near other mystical places, liminal spaces.”

“Like a cave or something?”

Mom smiled. “Yes. Caves, tree corridors, even volcanoes, or stone arches.”

To complicate matters, there was also the fact that some portals were permanent structures, and some were temporary, and if I was understanding correctly, the magic involved was both intense and draining. Thus, the reason it took so many to complete it.

“So how many worlds are there out there? And are they…different planets? Or… what?”

Mom chuckled. “So many questions. You’ve always been inquisitive. I’m not sure anyone really knows, but it seems logical to think of them as different planets.”

The more I learned the more I was sure that I would never fully understand anything here. “So, this world of Daria’s? Are they magic too?”

Mom sorted through the piles of books, taking some of them back to the shelves. “Some. As I understand it though, magic isn’t inherent. Some of the natives have the ability to learn to use it, and with that many portals, they’ve become something of a varied population of different species. Each bringing with them their own values, gifts, and magics.”

“Like here? With the dragons and phoenixes and incubi?”

“Not exactly the same. I’ve met Pixins who look a lot like Native Americans but have no gender. And there are Dealthians, like Habros who are big, but mostly human-looking. Aside from their coloring, of course.”

“Oh?” I asked, watching her move around the room tidying things up.

“Most of the native races on that world are shades of aqua and blue.”

I felt a bit like I was spinning out of my head. “Did you ever visit any place else? Like, go through other portals?”

She shook her head. “I was pretty content to just stay in Vaneesh, but Daria did a few field trips with her school to a place called Callipha. She and Habros also honeymooned there.”

“I promised Merry I would practice those spells she gave me. Got any pointers?” I held up my spell book. I had taken to jotting down new spells with notes about what they did and what I needed to know about them. Merry had been giving me new spells each day to practice.

Mom came back to the table, smiling. “Maybe take those attack spells outside? Unless you want to spend the afternoon cleaning up down here.”

“Fair point. What are you up to today?”

She sighed and hitched a thumb toward the stairs. “I am off to pick up the car that will get us to the portal, and then I’ll be packing us up.”

“We head out tomorrow?” I asked, gathering up some of the supplies I’d been sorting through for my casting practice.

“If you’re still up for it.”

She’d been keeping a close eye on my healing and stamina because it was a long hike up a mountain to get to the portal that would take us to Daria. If I were honest, I wanted another week to work on my stamina, but she was anxious to get back. “I’m up for it.”

We climbed the stairs then, emerging into a kitchen flooded with morning light. “You’ll need a jacket.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom.” I kissed her cheek and headed for the backyard where I could throw spells at targets Merry had set up for me. It was weird, this relationship I was building with her. The memories of my early childhood with her set certain emotional attachments that were hard to escape now that I remembered them, and yet here I was just getting to know her as an adult.

I set my book and supplies on the table beside the fire pit and stretched my arms up over my head, twisting at the waist to loosen up. I ran through the basics rapidly as a warm-up to the more complex spells. I tried to practice the entire list of spells I’d learned each day, kind of like spelling practice when I was a kid. The more I used them, the less likely I’d be to forget. I started with those Merry taught me that first day: open, close, come, go, and the others, about twenty in all. Most were simple things, good for day-to-day stuff, but of little use in the fight for your life when facing other magic users.

I went to the defensive spells then, starting with prostatévo and yperaspízo, both of which were quick means to block or push away an attack, but only in the direction they are cast. Next, I tried teíchos, which took me a few tries to get right. Both arms pushed out to the sides, hands upright. A wall of power slammed up when I finally got it correct, in a square around me. It would hold as long as I kept it powered, protecting me from just about any magic attack. Similar to basic wards, but only for as long as the witch could hold the spell.

prostatévoyperaspízoteíchosI turned to my book then, flipping pages until I found the list of more offensive spells. “Spróxte.” I made the corresponding pushing motion with one hand, aiming it at the nearest wooden targets at the other end of the yard. The target moved back a few inches. The second time, I used both hands and it toppled over backward. Merry had taught me that it was more about my will than the words or gestures. The words help focus the will, and the gesture gave it direction. I could only imagine how much stronger my will would be if I needed to use it to save myself.

SpróxteThat led me to the next couple of spells which were more than one word and gesture. The first two I had successfully cast several times. One was akin to actually punching someone while the second combined projected confusion with a cloaking spell. That one would have been handy to have in my arsenal at the Kourt.

The new spells were meant to be physical, and dangerous. The first would cast fire out of my hands, supposedly. I took a solid stance and raised my right hand, pointing it toward the target. With a deep breath, I reached for the magic inside me and murmured the words, barely audible. At first, nothing happened. There was a growing warmth in the palm of my hand and when I looked, I had a small ball of fire. I willed it toward the target, and it would have been amazing if I could actually aim.

Instead, it sort of flopped onto the ground at my feet, catching the grass until I stomped it out. There was a spell for that too, I just didn’t remember it. On the third try, I hit the target, then had to run to douse the fire. I set the target back onto its feet and shifted it back to its original position.

After checking my list, I set myself up for the next spell. It was meant to break whatever you were casting at, like a locked door or what-have-you. Conceivably, it could break bones, or so Merry had said. It had limited applications if stealth was important because Merry said that it made a lot of noise, but it was a good one to learn. I picked up the stick Merry had told me I would need and held it up, looking past it to the target. Trying to focus on both points was harder than I had imagined, and I wasn’t entirely sure I understood how to throw the energy from the stick to the target.

My first attempt sent the unbroken stick flying. The second resulted in a broken stick. I was forced to stop trying when I ran out of sticks to break. At least I was starting to feel the energy created when the stick snapped. I was also feeling the strain of the work. I had learned that magic was about energy and in order to use magic we needed to transfer that energy, whether we took it from an action, like breaking the stick, or from our own bodies.

Which was why it was so draining.

I suppressed a yawn and gathered my things to go back into the house. Mom was anxious to get moving, which meant that if I was going to get anything more out of Merry before we left, I needed to pin her down.

My first thought, as we parked the car in a remote and difficult-to-find spot on the side of a mountain, was that I wasn’t sure I had a ten-mile hike in me. I’d been imagining a nice, gentle walk in the woods, but gazing up at our destination, my thighs were already complaining in advance.

Mom smiled at me over the roof of the car. “It’s not that bad.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I can see it on your face. Daria wasn’t a fan either.”

I circled to the trunk to pull out my pack. It was a proper backpacking-style pack, complete with a rolled-up, magic bedroll that Mom hadn’t shown me how to use yet. I shrugged it on and took a look around. “Is the car going to be safe here?” I asked.

“It will be fine.” She locked the car as I closed the trunk and we turned to survey the mountain.

We were already deep into the Amerin mountain range that ran along the southern end of Spítia, my mother’s homeland. It had been almost three weeks since our spectacular escape from the Mauno Kourt and the magic-augmented surgery that had saved my life.

Merry had been thrilled to have students in the house that she could teach, and she had enthusiastically answered my million and one questions, shown me how to use spells, and gave me a crash course in potion making, which was one of her specialties. I’d hardly slept, using Merry’s potion to keep myself awake and alert. It was better than coffee, and I don’t say that lightly. I’d had an illicit affair with coffee since my teens.

“Okay, so where is this trail?” I asked as we started toward the trees.

“It isn’t a trail so much as it is a… let’s call it a path.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, Thána. I know where we’re going.”

I was skeptical, but I followed her. The ground was fairly level and the trees around us were a mix of what I took to be maple, or maple adjacent, and some sort of evergreen. It was hard to be certain here. So many things were just like home, but most of the time they were just off from what I saw as normal. Like the apples that Merry grew on a tree in her yard. They look just like nice Fuji apples until you bite into one. Then it’s all purple flesh and tasting of blueberries. Delicious, but off-putting the first few times I tried one.

After a half mile or so, our path turned west and started to climb. Here and there the ground showed signs of an actual path; leaves and grass worn down to dirt from feet that had trampled this way over time, but much of it was only a hint of that, the grass sparse and thin. As we continued climbing, the high canopy of leaves became a ceiling and despite the early afternoon sunshine, the path we walked grew dim.

“So why were you all the way up here?” I asked a little breathlessly as we paused by a fallen tree to rest. I took the canteen from my hip and took a big swig of water.

“There’s a cabin further west where I was hoping Daria and I could spend the summer. It belonged to a friend’s family when I was a girl. I thought it might keep the Brotherhood off our trail.”

“And this portal just… happened to be what you found first?”

She shrugged. “It seems to be one of the naturally occurring ones, though the only naturally occurring portals I’d ever known about before this one went to your world. Of course, I knew about man-made portals opening into other places, but never even considered that a natural one might.”

“So how far do we have to go?” I asked, looking up the slope.

She turned and let her gaze sweep the trees. “A couple of hours to the place we’ll camp tonight. Tomorrow around noon should put us at the portal.”

I nodded, still skeptical about the magic sleeping bag and lack of tent, since it was still technically winter, and even here in the middle of the afternoon, it was cool. It would turn positively cold as the sun went down.

In the weeks since we had somehow pulled off the most impossible rescue, I had gotten the chance to get to know the mother who had loved me enough to hide me away. She took any memory of my life before that day and abandoned me to a life without her in a last-ditch attempt to keep me safe.

With my memory of her finally restored, I was glad to discover that despite being a prisoner of a religious cult for two years, Alana Alizon was much the same woman as she was in my memory of her. Her smile was warm and comforting and her voice stilled some need in me that I couldn’t even name.

Her laugh was richer than I remembered, and her hair had lost the glossy black of her youth, faded now into a mix of gray and silver and white that I thought made her even more beautiful. There were lines around her eyes and deeper lines between them. Her deep blue eyes sparkled whenever she spoke of my sister Daria, Daria’s son Kota, or my father.

She was a very tactile person though, something I was struggling to get used to. Having spent eight years of my life in foster care, I had developed an aversion to being held or even touched in some cases. Not due to anything bad happening, but none of the foster families I stayed with were physically affectionate. It rubbed off and kind of became my default over the years.

Still, she was fond of casual touch, of a hand on my arm and spontaneous hugging, and I was trying to cope with it. To be fair, she caught on pretty quickly and had curbed her need to constantly touch me. Maybe she was just reassuring herself that I was actually there.

“Hey, you ready to keep moving?” Mom asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Sure, lead on.” I leveraged myself up off the log after reattaching my canteen to my belt. Several hours later, we emerged from the trees to find a lake, with flat grassy land for camping on and there was even a fire ring already built.

We shrugged off our packs and Mom sent me back into the woods to forage for firewood. By the time I came back with an armful of dry wood, she had cleared a good 20-foot circle around the fire ring and was setting up her new set of ward stones. “We’ll need some bigger logs to get us through the night,” she said without looking up.

“Okay. I saw some dead stuff, but it’s all too big to carry.”

She looked up then. “The word is tomí. Center, touch the wood where you want to cut it, and say tomí.”

tomíI headed back into the tree line and angled toward where I had seen the downed branches. The whole tree was dead, but most of it was still standing. I circled the pile of branches, looking for ones that were substantial, but that I could still carry, and finally pulled one branch thicker than my calf from the pile. I took a moment to breathe in slowly and let it out just as slowly, reaching inside me for the spot at my center that Merry had taught me was the place my magic lived. I set my hand on the wood and murmured the word.

Under my hand, the wood cracked and split cleanly. I grinned to myself and moved my hand further up the branch and repeated the spell twice more until I had six decent-sized pieces of wood.

I had a harder time stacking it all so I could carry it than I did cutting it, but eventually, I got it all up and headed back to my mother. She had a tidy fire going with the wood I had already brought back, and her ward stones looked ready to deploy. The field generated around the small circle of stones had a vague red tint to it, so it had to be some variation I had yet to learn. Most of the ones I knew tilted toward blues or greens.

She had food prepped to cook, the cast iron frying pan sat on the stones around the fire ring, filled with a fish. “I was gone ten minutes,” I said as I stacked the wood a few feet from the fire. “How have you already caught and cleaned a fish? You didn’t even pack a fishing pole.”

She chuckled. “I’ll teach you how to call them to you. First, let’s get our warding up.”

I moved toward her, bending down to take the first pair as she took the opposite pair. We moved away from each other toward the places she had already marked. We repeated the steps for the rest of the pairs, stretching out the field until it formed a dome barely over our heads. “There, that should help us stay warm,” Mom said, moving back to the fire.