Sorcerers were easy to spot for two reasons. The first being that most, like Eira and Alyss, wore black robes of varying styles depending on their rank and type of elemental affinity. The second being that Commons would take wide steps to avoid being in a sorcerer’s path.
Eira and Alyss entered through the main lobby, but stopped off in a side room, where they prepared for the day. They both tied masks over their faces and covered their hands with thick gloves before bidding each other goodbye. However, before Eira left, she couldn’t help but notice even Alyss had more people on her list than she did.
Sighing, Eira tucked her hair behind her ears and forced herself to focus. She may be the runt, the outcast, the weird one…but these people still needed what comforts she could bring. She looked at the first name on the list, cross-checked it against a cleric’s ledger, and then proceeded to a room in the far back wing where all activity was hushed by the presence of death itself.
Eira drifted from room to room, her magic at service to the people of the Solaris Empire. It had been the idea of the empress, they said, to make sorcerers at the behest of the people. To make use of magic beyond times of war and bring it into the sun from the shadowed corners and back alleys sorcerers had been repressed into for as long as time was counted in the Empire.
The tools of her trade were simple—a bowl and some wooden tokens. Eira would fill the bowl with water and then place the token at its center. Using her magic, she could record the words of the sick into the token and turn it into a vessel for his or her family to listen to later, just in case the worst befell them.
When Eira was finished, she returned to the Tower alone. Alyss would take at least double the amount of time. As a Groundbreaker, she was actually trying to heal the people. She could do that much. All Eira functioned as was an assistant to a friend she knew well—death.
Eira wandered the empty halls. Classes were in session and the sorcerers who weren’t attending were out in the city. People were tired of being cooped up, and they were eager for spring.
… I can’t believe… I’ll get him back…
… Prince Baldair is dead…
Eira paused at the familiar voice. The Tower Library was unassuming in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the back windows. It was completely silent—just her and the murmurs.
“Who are you…were you?” Eira whispered, taking a step inside. A tendril of magic reached out through the air without her permission, grasping, searching. Seeking that familiar voice that she’d heard so many times in these halls.
For the first time, Eira didn’t try and stop her magic. She dared to let her power wander, as Alyss would encourage, just to see what it would find.
…All of this…end very soon… The voice whispered from somewhere across space and time.
Eira paused by the back windows, looking out over the city.
Someone had been here. Someone immensely powerful. Someone with magic strong enough to imprint their words onto the very fibers of the cushions, or the stone of the walls, without even realizing it. Unintentional vessels, such things were called, and they were regarded as being highly uncommon.
Eira had tried to tell her teacher otherwise once and was reprimanded. Her theory on unintentional vessels being far more common than anyone realized—if you knew how to listen for them—was of the many things she now kept silent on.
“That reminds me…” Eira started back up the Tower, pausing at the storeroom across from the Waterrunners’ workroom. Instruction echoed out through the cracked door. She used one particularly zealous order to hide the soft squeal of the storeroom’s hinges as she slipped inside.
Luckily, Noelle and Adam were off elsewhere. Eira did a quick round of the dusty shelves. A single bulb of glass—a flame magically hovering within—danced with the long shadows cast by Watterunner tools.
“All right, Alyss. Fine. Let’s see if you’re right. If this is really a gift.” Eira gathered her courage and asked the air, “Who were you trying to kill?”
…just imagine, Emperor Solaris… the icy voice from earlier whispered as if in reply.
Eira spun, heart racing. She wasn’t used to the voices replying. The traces of magic were ornery things, difficult to pin down in the best of times. They spoke to her on their terms, never on hers.
Or, maybe Alyss was right. Maybe she’d never really tried.
“When?” Silence. “When?” Was there a plot to kill the emperor? Her heart was in her throat now. Surely no one would—
No one knows about this place…our secret…The voice was fainter, vanishing. Eira could almost feel the ghost of the woman with the icy tones passing through her and heading…no, that couldn’t be right…heading to the back corner of the room?
Eira scattered the cobwebs and dragged her fingers through years of dust along a groove she had never noticed in the back corner. It was half-hidden by a shelf and a barrel. There, concealed by the shadow of an alcove, was a small handle. She gripped it and tugged. Then pushed.
Just when Eira was about to give up, unseen hinges groaned. She pushed harder. The door released at once, swinging open.
Eira went head-over heels and toppled into a secret chamber.
2
Coughing dust, Eira pushed her hair from her eyes and tried to get her bearings. The storeroom door latch disengaging drew her attention to the room she’d come from. Jumping to her feet, Eira grabbed the hidden door and snapped it shut before anyone else could see her…or her discovery.
She leaned against the door, holding her breath and listening. Supplies clanked in the other room as the person rummaged around the Waterrunner supplies. Eira prayed to the Mother above that they
