“Sometimes your desired effect has no associated symbol, or there’s no way of putting the parameters in place required to keep it safe. And sometimes the magic is tattooed in and can’t be removed, overridden, or counteracted,” he says, rubbing the small of his back – where the Return Seal is firmly embedded in his skin. “If I’m being honest with you, Kitten, Silvari magic is nothing but fluid. The barriers and limitations I know of are only barriers and limitations until someone works out a way to get around them.”
I groan. “So you’re saying yes she could unseal you, but you don’t have the right Unseal Seal to do it?” He nods, so I continue, “Why don’t you just make one?”
“Why don’t you just make one?”
“Because I have no idea how!” Now I’m shouting.
But he’s still chuckin’ smiling at me. It’s infuriating.
“Exactly. Seal Masters might have known enough, but there’s none left, and even if there was Jada isn’t that advanced yet.”
“What about the Release Seal – couldn’t she just create an endless supply of those?”
“Lesser or more basic level sigils don’t require a Seed to apply, but advanced sigils and every kind of seal do. So yes, she could make Release Seals, but we’d still need her to apply them and she’s Sealed against using her magic without three signatures on an Assignment.”
“She has a Seal Seal?” I hedge, unable to keep myself from smirking at the idea.
“She has a Tally Seal –”
I hold my hand up and cut him off, “Nope, wait. My idea’s better. She has a Seal Seal.”
His eyes sparkle as he picks up his sentence, “It tallies the number of times she uses her magic from the minute she leaves the Black Castle ‘til the minute she returns – leaving a sketch of the seal she has applied on her own hand for confirmation by the council when she returns.”
I shrug. Doesn’t sound like much of an issue to me. “I’d still do it.”
“Sure, she could, if she enjoyed spending time in the castle dungeons, rotting behind Saber-proof bars. She’s only young, our age, and she has superiors to answer to – Lithael being one of them, since she lives at the Black Castle.”
“Then she has no business coming here. You don’t need her – you need someone that can issue the orders.”
“Lithael already showed us how to get around his orders. The right words and a little tweak of the seal, and anything is possible. Getting the assignments, the ones we can use to our advantage, is Jada’s first task; once I explain how Lithael’s been making alterations, I’m confident she can do the same.” He’s turned, like this conversation has grown old and it’s distracting him from something much better.
“So you need Jada, and she’s going to come here, and what? Bring others?”
“Exactly.”
“And where are they going to stay?” I demand. I almost said ‘sleep,’ but that would have given away my true feelings.
He shrugs. “They probably won’t. They may hunt, eat, rest, then most likely ride out again. We can’t linger.”
I rub the palm of my hand against my temple; the musty smell of the room threatens to make me sneeze. Nope, wait – I do sneeze.
The sound echoes and makes Roarke turn to smile at me. “Your sneezes are cute.”
“No, they’re not,” I groan, giving my nose a wriggle to ease the leftover tingling sensation. “You were telling me the plan.”
“Right. While we wait for the others, we’re going to try to reverse-engineer the whatever-it-was Seth and Logan created. I’ve got no idea what Logan’s potion was called and even less idea which Potions Master created that recipe. The odds were in our favor that Eydis would have known or could have worked with the Rearrange Potion and her knowledge to undo things, but the scales are now tipped against us. I’m just hoping there’ll be a reference to it in one of her journals.”
“So we’re starting with what we do know? The Rearrange-thingy-potion that Seth tried to use on Logan’s workbook.” Well, that Seth got me to pour onto Logan’s book moments before blue mist filled the Potions lab and my bubble came into existence.
“Yes, but I already have a simple reversal for that. The Rearrange Potion is pretty common, and Seth has used it before. It does, however, need a key ingredient – water fresh from the Spring.” He stops and looks around the room with a furrowed brow.
Then, without any explanation, he starts sifting through all her bottles and jars, anything with water in it.
“Weildron blood. Blue moon rain. Ice thawed from an arctic dragon’s tooth,” he mumbles, plus a few others I don’t understand. Finally, he straightens. “No Spring.”
“So? Isn’t it here – I mean, out there?”
His hair sways with his slow shake, the metallic silver strands glinting in the lantern light. “Masters hide their Springs to stop people like us from helping themselves.”
“It’s an ingredient; you can get it anywhere, can’t you? She must bottle it –” He’s shaking his head again. “ – No? You can’t.”
“Supply moves between the Masters and the Castles in yearly batches. Eydis would lecture at the White Castle every year, and every time it was about responsibilities and repercussions. She was a bit of a broken record. I didn’t realize she delivered water from the Origin Spring.”
“Because it was in the Potion Master’s locked cupboard,” I whisper, remembering Logan needed a key to unlock the last ingredient.
“I thought the real challenge would be the addition of Logan’s potion, but this is going to make things complicated. And I don’t even have water to practice with. The annoying thing is the Rearrange Potion doesn’t even use Origin Spring water, it uses a lesser spring.”
Complicated. Like my life.
“Well, that explains your mother’s prophecy – Because I heard what the Origin Spring said to the tallest forest tree – the key will be in the last of me.”
“Certainly
