Calling Magic

CHAPTER 1-2

“Emm, I’m visiting the city and I need a place to stay,” I said. As his eyes trailed my body I said with a snap, “Like an inn or something.”

“The Rose Inn. That’s where you need to go,” he answered, leaning back into his chair.

“How can I find that?”

“With a click, a path shall be revealed to the fair maiden. With a blink, she will find her way,” the old man sang.

“What?” I was getting annoyed. Seriously, a sonnet? Was I in a book?

The old man laughed and a puff of smoke escaped his mouth, and I squinted my eyes at his pipe. I could have sworn that the handle whirled a bit with his laugh.

“The sign, love.” He pointed the pipe at a random spot behind me.

I turned and for the first time I noticed them: metal boards nailed to the corner of each building with signs naming a part of the city (central market, a place called a pharmacy, names of streets and other things I didn’t recognize) with an arrow pointing at the alley leading to those places. But none mentioned the inn.

I rolled my eyes and was about to turn and really snap at the old man, when all the signs flickered at the same time and new places and arrows appeared on them.

And there it was, a sign with the Rose Inn.

“You’re welcome!” the old man called behind me as I sprinted toward the alley the sign pointed at.

“Thank you!” I shouted back at him, as I took a turn right.

Following the signs, I ended up in a narrow road, standing before a big wooden door, a golden rose carved in its center. Two boys dragged one of the wheeled trunks up the steps to get it inside.

I smiled, happy to accomplish my first goal in this city. I opened the door and held it for the boys and waited for them to haul the trunk inside. I would’ve spelled the trunk to float, but I had learned my lesson and wouldn’t risk it.

“Thank ya, miss!” one of the boys said to me with a smile.

I winked at them as I closed the door, and then looked around the inn, which to my shock was a tiny room with a desk and a spiral staircase to the left. The whole place was wooden brown and a silver tube lined the walls. I couldn’t even see the boys there anymore.

Setting aside my curiosity at where they had gone, I approached the woman standing behind the desk. She had her black hair tied up in a knot and her eyes focused on a paper in her hand.

“Hello,” I said.

“How many rooms and how many nights?” the lady asked, still focused on the paper.

“One and emm one.”

“Any luggage?” She picked up a feather pen from the desk and scribbled something on her paper. Like the old man’s pipe, the pen was partly metal.

“No.” I shook my head and wondered how much Paiza depended on mechanics and metals.

“It’s three pieces of silver for the night and if you want dinner that’s an additional two pieces of copper.” The lady placed her paper and feather on the desk and looked at me for the first time. “Payment’s upfront,” she added with pursed lips as she tucked an escaped lock back into her hair knot.

I took out the money and handed it to her, happy she wasn’t fazed by my appearance. As an innkeeper, she must have met all sorts of people, even those weirder than me.

She turned the coins in her hand, and I was afraid she wouldn’t accept them. They were not Paizan currency, but I was doing my best to keep exchanging coins to not leave a trail of Court of Wizards silvers. They dealt solely with silver and gold there for some reason. Probably because they thought copper was beneath them.

The innkeeper placed the coins inside a wooden box on the table. She clicked a button on the side and a metallic claw appeared and tapped each coin. Satisfied by the clink she heard, the innkeeper nodded at me.

“This way,” she said, as she took a key out from her desk drawer and walked toward the staircase. I followed.

She stopped at the first step and signed for me to stand beside her. I did.

She pulled a lever and clink, clink the stair beneath us screeched and, with a louder clink, moved us up the spiral staircase. I bit my lip, trying not to be too foreign and act all amazed.

The first floor was a wide dining hall with round tables scattered around. It wasn’t a meal time, so the place was quiet and fairly empty except for a hooded man drinking and an inn worker sweeping the wooden floor. Sunlight seeped in through the gaps in between the windows’ copper braces, giving the place a golden hue. With the silence and the warmth coming from the iron stove in the corner, I felt so serene, like I could sit there with a cup of tea all day long.

Why couldn’t I feel that back at the court? I thought with sorrow.

“Sorry,” I breathed out, as the lady nudged me to take a step back. The mechanical stairs took us up to the next floor, where my room was located.

And what a cute room it was, with its wooden furniture and flowery walls. I sat on the clean, rose-patterned bedsheets and my cheeks began to hurt from how wide I was smiling. I was so exhilarated by the fact that I had made it this far that I didn’t even hear the lady mumble something about dinner before she closed the door behind her. That was alright, I would go downstairs later and ask her.

I was here. I was finally out of the Court of Wizards and I was really in Paiza to find a new home. I jumped off the bed and passed a small table with a water basin on it and stood by the window. Unlike the windows in the lower floors, my window didn’t have any copper braces, which gave me a clear view of the outside.

Below me was a narrow alley, one of the many cutting the city into an illuminating maze. Metallic carts of various shapes and colors held a variety of wonderful products, from silk to vegetables, and one was even full of copper and iron trinkets. Behind each cart stood a man or woman, and some even had a young boy or girl manning it. It was a market.

Maybe I’d venture into it the next morning.

It’s not your home yet, a tiny voice in my head said. I sighed. Yes, I still had to go to the interview tomorrow and I had to compete with other magicians to get the job. There was also the chance that the court magician himself would be more dreadful than the high members of the Court of Wizards. I shook my head. I doubted it. I reminded myself that I had managed to receive an invitation to Paiza, to leave that morbid court and to travel all the way here.

I should enjoy that accomplishment.

I turned, and a glimpse of a shadow behind me made me flinch.

“Bubbles!” I cursed. It was my reflection in the mirror. Was the mirror there all the time? Ah, I really need to pay more attention.

After my nerves calmed from the fright of the apparent visitor, I faced my reflection. I really needed to change this total black-themed attire. I looked as grim as death.

I removed my scarf and let my purple curls fall around my face. I couldn’t help but smile at the comforting sight of them. The color of my hair was the only thing I couldn’t change about my body, not even with magic. It pained me how I had to hide my hair during my travel, but I had to do it just in case someone was chasing me. I ruffled my hair, then held my left wrist up. I removed my silver bracelet that had one tiny charm in the shape of a bag and placed it on the floor.

I was about to cast a spell when I remembered how catastrophic the morning had been. The image of almost falling into the river would be stuck in my head for years. But Paiza was different. Paiza had a court magician and was circled by spell-bound walls, for pixies’ sake. And I had an invitation to be there.

Still, just to be sure, I decided to start with something small.

I lifted my head to face the mirror again and tapped one finger to my lips, and the black shade was replaced with a softer pink. I stood still and closed my eyes, letting my senses lend their focus to my ears. I listened for a moment, then for another. Nothing happened. No horns wailing and no guards breaking into my room.

I was so thrilled that, without thinking, I called “Ando” and flicked my hand over the bracelet. My movement was so rash and the pendant expanded so rapidly that it burst open and I was thrown back by the explosion of my clothes.

“Aaah!” I screeched as I fell on the bed with a mountain of clothes on top of me. I normally would have been annoyed by that, but at that moment I laughed. I was free to do magic again!

I sat up and squinted, focusing on casting an organizing spell. I mouthed the incantation a few times until my things flew back into the bag, all neat and folded.

Feeling satisfied at how good(ish) I was getting at casting simple calling spells, I picked up the dress I had left out and changed into it.

With pink lips, a light green dress and my purple hair hidden under a scarf, I headed to the staircase. I needed to eat. I stood at the first step and searched for the handle the innkeeper had controlled the stairs with, but it was nowhere to be found.

Remembering the trunk with the claws, I searched for buttons. I tapped the banister, trying for hidden buttons, but nothing. This was supposed to be an inn for foreigners, why would they make it this hard?

“Open!” I snapped, and somehow, out of frustration, my power escaped my binding and the handle popped out with a cloud of white smoke.

“Hex!” I gasped. I wielded my power to fix this, only for another cloud of smoke to escape from the handle. I cursed again and bolted back to my room.

I locked the door behind me and slid down to the floor, my heart a drum in my chest.

I buried my head in my hands and groaned. Such a great start.

Muffled voices traveled along the corridor and into my room. I gulped and pulled myself together. I had to know the extent of the damage I had done, and whether I needed to jump out of the window and run.

Still kneeling on the floor, I unlocked my door and opened it just enough to poke my head out. I saw the innkeeper with a man holding an iron box, standing next to what now looked like a combusted banister.

“Just a small mechanical difficulty. No need to worry. We are fixing it,” the innkeeper said with a thin smile to the guests who came out of their rooms.

Go to sleep, I thought as I shut the door again. That was the safest option for me now. “Food will have to wait,” I whispered to my grumbling stomach.

I laid my head on the pillow and hoped at least tomorrow would be disaster free. I revised some of the spells I would do for the interview, as the invitation mentioned there would be a magic demonstration by the applicants. When I had recited all the spells in my head and was confident that I remembered them all, I decided to try and sleep.

Sleep was never easy for me, especially after my powers bloomed (actually, exploded was more like it) at the Court of Wizards. I had been cast as a caller for years, but then suddenly I was discovered to be a wielder, and my nights were filled with sudden magic calls, visits from unwanted creepy spirits and worry about what the next day would bring. I breathed steadily to calm my nerves and reminded myself that I was out and that I was inside the safest city in all the land. Not even the high members of the court, the most powerful wielders in history, could enter Paiza without an invitation.

Closing my eyes, I didn’t allow myself to think about the possibility of failing. If I failed, I had nowhere else to go.