person. Even if he did have power, he would be content with it, and not yearn for more. Pael’s concern seemed rooted in fear for himself. If what Pael had said was true, that the same power that had manifested in him, had also manifested in Gerard, then it made sense that Pael would fear Gerard if he were released. After all, it had been Pael who had shoved the dagger into Gerard’s heart. He of all people would expect Gerard to come seeking vengeance.
Shaella had to force the excitement from tingling through her body. She had to be clearheaded when Pael had her speak the blood oath. She couldn’t be filled with daydreams, and delusions of Gerard. The exact words of a given oath were sometimes the undoing of it. It wouldn’t do to have her head in the clouds when she spoke hers.
Once they reached the floor below the library, Shaella halted the lift. She showed Pael where the books were stacked up off of the floor on a plank of wood that she had sat on a couple of stone blocks. The room stank sharply, with a mixture of scents that were foreign to the common nose. A cask of bear urine, and an open jar of pickled griffin livers were the main contributors, but a crate full of dried bat wings, and many different bags of the herbs and powders used in spell crafting, added to the fierce aroma.
Pael ignored the stench, as he hurried to kneel on the dust caked floor before the stack of books. He ran his finger down the spines, searching the titles. More than once, he growled in frustration. Before long, he had the once neat piles scattered across the floor, and had created a new stack. Flipping through the pages of these with a feverish intensity, he ended up discarding all but two of them into the disarray.
The two that he kept, he sat on a shelf, next to a jar full of grayish, yellow liquid, labeled Plague Pus. In the jar next to it, a fat black spider with a bright yellow star-like design on its back, floated in clear liquid. Shaella studied it all as she waited on him. The shape of the spider’s mark was like three double jagged lightning bolts, all crossing in the middle. Shaella and Cole had been trying to decide what symbol she would use on her banner, and now the choice had been made. Cole’s dragon design was fierce and impressive, but this was not the dragon’s kingdom, nor was it Cole’s. Shaella would have the lightning star.
“What kind of spider is this?” she asked her father.
Pael was making a halfhearted effort to restack the texts he’d strewn about, but he stopped long enough to look and see what she was referring to.
“One you don’t ever want to get bitten by,” he said, as he went back to what he was doing. “It’s called Arachnid Voltonimous, common name, the Luminous Weaver, or just the plain ol’ Shock Spider. Its web glows a soft, yellowish color at night, and with a single bite, it can kill an animal as big as an opossum, or lemur, with a shock of lightning-like intensity. The shock is not quite powerful enough to kill an average human, but its venom is acidic, and painfully lethal. The venom is excellent for etching, and enchanting steel with a rune or a symbol.”
Her eyes drifted to the cover of the book Pael had left exposed. It had the letter P scribed ornately upon its leather-bound face, four times. She had to peer in closer, to see the smaller script between the letters. “Plants and Potions for Poison and Preservation” the book was titled.
A brief tremor of paranoia passed through her, only subsiding after she convinced herself that her father had no reason to kill her, and that if he did, he didn’t need poison to get it done. Neither Cole, nor Flick, who would each die for her in any other situation, would do anything to thwart Pael. They both emulated him in every way that they could. If Pael wanted to kill her, all he had to do was kill her, or possibly order one of them to do it for him. She shook her head, and cursed herself a fool for being so stupidly suspicious.
Pael had stood, and was now making a feeble attempt to get the dust off of the hem of his fancy wizard’s robe. The sight made Shaella smile, in spite of herself.
Seeing her mirth, Pael snarled. He passed his hand over his face, down his body, and with the gesture, his robe was instantly pristine again.
Shaella wasn’t impressed.
“The Spectral Orb?” she prompted, seeing that he had already forgotten their agreement. She hoped that he had forgotten the oath that he wanted her to swear as well.
“Very well,” he said, grabbing up the two books he had chosen. “Take us up out of this foul place. I have a dagger up in the nest.”
Disappointed that he hadn’t forgotten the Binding of Blood, but excited beyond reason about finally getting to learn the trick to using the artifact, she spoke the command that took the lift up into the library.
Pael snarled with disgust, at having to crawl up through the trapdoor to get to the nest, and then the floor above it, but he went.
The first thing he showed her, was how to raise the orb up out of the floor by the chain crank on the wall, so that it didn’t block the lift from coming all the way up. He didn’t raise it far, just enough to show her how the mechanics of the crank worked. He then took a dagger from a table, and before she had a chance to think, he slashed her palm open.
“By your own life’s blood, do you swear to never attempt to release the one you seek, the human boy named Gerard, who went to the Seal? Do you swear to never try to release him from that dark place where he is bound?”
Shaella wasn’t very pleased with the broad range of possibilities that Pael’s words had encompassed, but already a loophole had presented itself to her.
“As long as you live and breathe father, my blood is my oath. I swear that I will never attempt to release the human boy named Gerard, from the Nethers.”
Pael spoke a chant of binding, and then closed Shaella’s bleeding hand in on itself. He went on chanting in the ancient tongue of the magi, to finish the spell.
She understood most of what he said. If she broke her oath, her own mind would stop her heart from beating, freeze her blood, or something to that effect. Basically, if she even tried to break the oath she had just given, she would die. This was acceptable to her. The oath she had given wouldn’t stop her from having someone else help Gerard get free of the Seal. And besides that, her father had already told her that he had changed. Drinking the dragon’s yolk had turned him into something other than a human boy named Gerard. Whatever he had become, she hadn’t sworn not to help it escape the Seal. If Gerard’s mind hadn’t survived, then it didn’t really matter anyway. She hoped she would know, one way or the other, soon.
She paid close and careful attention as Pael instructed her on the ways of the orb. The session reminded her of so many others they had shared in the past. Him, speaking with precise expert knowledge of the subject at hand, and almost forcing the information into her mind with his intensity. The only thing missing was the scratching of Cole’s quill, as he feverishly tried to keep up his notes, and Flick’s odd, yet relevant questions.
Shaella realized that even though she didn’t like her father very much, he was no fool. In fact, he was as knowledgeable as all the men she had met in her entire life, put together. He was half mad, power hungry, and rotten to the core; but ignorant, he was not. His dark mind was meticulous and thorough, and with his newfound power, Shaella figured that there was nothing he couldn’t do.
Pael set the orb off, with his circling chanting song, as if it were no harder then plucking an apple from a tree. She hadn’t been using the right inflections of voice at all. The syllables of the ancient words she had read had been formed all wrong in her mouth, and she hadn’t even known about the three black candles that had to be lit, and spaced around the orb.
Pael explained that the candles weren’t actually necessary to open the connection, but they helped focus his mind on the task. He also explained that the gaping hole in the wall was letting in minute distractions, such as the whispering of the late summer breeze, or a distant bird’s call. This hadn’t been helping her concentration at all, and if she acknowledged those distractions, and singled them out of her mind, it might help.
Once Pael had the orb alight and swirling with purple smoky power, he took his books, and disappeared back to where he had come from.
Shaella trailed her fingers around the huge crystal as she circled it. She spoke Gerard’s name softly at first, then more aggressively, if not a bit desperately. For what could have been a few heartbeats, or half of the night, she poured her heart and soul into the effort. After a time, her legs grew watery, and she fell to the floor at the base of the humming lavender sphere. When she opened her eyes, the light of dawn was just starting to lighten the sky outside the gaping hole in the tower wall. She wiped a tear from her face, and seeing that the Spectral Orb was still radiant, made one last attempt to call out to Gerard.
“Gerard, hear me my love. Can you hear me? Gerard?” The static caused by the sphere’s power, pulled her hair to its surface as she leaned in, hugging the huge orb, and yearned to touch her lover soul.
