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stitchwitchsapprentice · 11 months

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The Shadow Speaker (Magic Manipulators #2)

To read Magic Manipulators #1, The Curse Breaker, click here.

"And if you were accepted to teach at Knights, what sort of research would you conduct with the school's resources?"

He spoke slowly. "I... am interested in the farthest extents of magic manipulation--the rare cases in which people have been shown to do things far beyond their given abilities. For example, my mother has a gift for manipulating the weather, yet she has learned to transport herself to different planets, in a manner that is different from that of traditional transportation magic." He did not mention that she had first transported herself from a different solar system all together, or that he hoped to use Knights' resources to find a way to break the pixie curse he had inherited from her. He had learned that the hard way--in his last interview at Knights. He marveled that the interview process for teaching was somehow normal, a far cry from the application process students endured.

Nevertheless, the questions here led him deeper into mythologies and his need to explain why he believed they held grains of truth. Within the last century, people had discovered, had they not, that a very small percentage of the population was gifted with death magic--a magic that drove them to execute criminals and protected them from dying themselves. In his hometown of Whitefall, some TV executive had even created a show where several of them came out of hiding each year and killed each other in an arena-style competition. They weren't actually going to die, after all, so it was perfectly safe and humane. If death witches were once thought of as myths, why couldn't other myths be true?

When Julian walked out, he pulled his communicator out of his pocket and sent a message to his old professor. If Knights didn't work out, he might be able to get a position at Redlands University, where he had finished his last degree. Then he went to Independence Market.

Once a fully outdoor market, a stained glass pavilion had been erected a few centuries earlier to protect buyers and sellers from bad weather. Julian always marveled at it as he passed underneath. They could have built a large shock shield, like those used in windows, or created a magical weather barrier, either of which would have been essentially invisible. Instead, someone had thought to make an artwork out of it, making the market wholly unique to Whitefall. It was also one of the last traditional markets in the area, which means it came with the added benefit lacking the giant telescreens seen other parts of the city, which at this time of year, were advertising Death Tag. He could not, however, avoid the conversation.

"I don't know why she even competes. She loses every year."

"Eh, you just like to complain about everything."

Julian stopped at one stand to buy some strawberries and a bottle of juice to drink. "What do you think, professor?" asked the bookseller next to him. "Why does this 'Lights' girl even try if she knows she's going to be the first one dead?"

Julian suppressed the urge to chastise them over their morbid interest. "Maybe she doesn't care about winning. And I'm not a professor yet."

"Don't mind him," said the fruit seller, a tall man who was clearly trying to make up for early hair loss with his incredible mustache, "he's just cranky because the girl who helps him ran off with some boy who had a backstage pass. But tell us, how did the interview go?"

Julian shook his head. The fruit seller was the biggest gossip he knew. But, he supposed, working in the center of Independence Market every day would make it easy to hear all the latest news. He had learned not to be coy with his answers. "It was an interview. If they hire me, you'll know." Knights professors were immediately recognizable by the orange neckties they wore.

Julian turned then to the bookseller, a man who he suspected had grown out his own facial hair to disguise the scars from an accident in his younger years. "Do you have anything of interest for me?"

The man's disposition changed as he extracted a volume from a box labeled reserved. "Only Kai Casco's History of the Development of Magic. I know you've been looking for it for a while."

"Yeah! He's supposed to offer a unique insight on..."

"...the early discrimination of non-transport wizards," the seller finished with him.

Julian grinned. "I guess I've been talking about it for a while."

"My girl wanted it, but I told her it was for my best customer. Glad I did, seeing as she's not here today."

Julian thanked him and paid for the book. "Hope you don't have to wait to long on that interview!" The fruit seller called as he walked away.

Julian turned and waved. "Well, if I don't get it, maybe I can go back to Octavia," he said, naming the planet where Redlands was located.

He didn't have to worry. Knights called him the next day to offer him the position. When Julian returned, he briefly met with the president of the school, who then introduced him to a young woman with mousy auburn hair and hazel eyes.

"This is Emily Ronin. She'll be your teacher's aide. Emily, could you take Professor Day to his classroom?"

Emily didn't look particularly excited about this. She stood with her arms crossed, scowling at the door frame. But she did as she was asked, and brought Julian to a roomy classroom with an office inset on one side.

"My office is in my classroom?" He said surprised. He dropped his bag on the desk in the smaller room and surveyed the books that the previous professor had left behind.

"I guess someone thought it made more sense than making people move around room to room. And the room is properly warded, since you're teaching about magic." She pointed to warding pattern painted around the top of the room.

"So you took the class last year, with uh... Professor Askin?" He tried to remember the name of the Magic Studies professor who had just retired.

Emily snorted, arms still crossed. "No. He was in denial that..." She shook her head. "Never mind."

"Well, if you haven't taken the class, how did you become my teacher's aide?"

"The president intervened." She mumbled this first part to her shoes, but then she stood up straight, and looked him in the eye as if offering a challenge. "Anyway, I was in here cataloging books earlier, and I borrowed Speaking Spells into Being. I can bring it back to you tomorrow."

"You haven't taken this class, but you're reading Speaking Spells into Being." Julian said it slowly, trying to convince himself the girl was telling the truth.

"I needed to conduct some research," she said matter-of-factly, "I think there have been some magical anomalies at the Hayder Street Temple."

Julian smirked. "Aren't they building there? Maybe the Calistian gods are stopping by to oversee the construction."

"I doubt it. Do you still need me?"

"No, I... I... guess I'll see you when classes start."

"See you." She walked away, leaving Julian to wonder what type of student became the TA for a class they had never taken. If the president had intervened, maybe they were related. But that didn't explain her research, unless she was lying about that. There was one way to find that out.

Hayder Street was in the oldest part of the city. The original temple had been destroyed during Patlee War, and only some of original outer walls remained. Some followers of Brian, the god of plants, had since turned it into a public garden, with a spiral walk. Now someone was building a new altar at the center of walk, as a way of building an open air version of the old place. As Julian walked down the path, he didn't notice anything of particular interest, magically speaking, though he liked being surrounded by so many trees. He supposed that was his pixie blood. The foliage was just beginning to turn yellow. In a few weeks, the stones of the path would be covered with fallen leaves.

Someone bumped into him. it was a brown-skinned woman with her hair in a puff. "Excuse me." She stopped suddenly and looked at him, turning her head slightly, as if there was something about his face that puzzled her.

"Yes?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, I thought I recognized you for a minute." The woman also looked familiar to Julian, though he couldn't place her. But before he could ask, she had gone on her way.

Julian continued down the path to the half-finished altar at its center. The builders had already gone home for the day, and the sun was beginning to set. Julian looked at his watch. It wasn't nearly late enough for that. He didn't know what it was, but apparently Emily had been right. Something weird was happening. He set off back down the spiral path, walking quickly, to see if the sun was setting only in this area, when he ran again into the woman.

"Okay, very funny," she said, "but I've had enough of your little shadow realm, so why don't we leave?"

"What?"

"Your one mistake was coming by. You knew I was supposed to meet my contact here, and you thought you would twist her magic to trap us. And you might have succeeded, if you had just done it from a distance. But no, you had to come in person."

"I have no idea what you're taking about." Julian raised his hands slowly into the air, hoping to prove he wasn't a threat.

"Really? Then would care to elaborate on why you're here?"

Julian felt a snap in his spine as her request activated his pixie curse. Before he could stop himself, he answered. "Something is off about my student aide, and I'm trying to figure out what it is."

The woman blinked at him. "That answer came way too quickly."

"I'm telling the truth!"

"I know you are. Which, unfortunately, means you are not the person who set this trap." She squinted at him through the growing gloom. "Who are you?" He actually saw her eyes roll when he didn't answer. "Would you tell me who you are?"

"Professor Julian Daye," his curse forced him to give his name, but he added, "if you really want to play this game, let me warn you, my mother taught me well." He had spent much of his childhood learning how to comply with requests in the most literal way. He did not mention he was out of practice.

"No thanks." She had turned her back on him and was now peering around the garden. "I'm not stupid enough to play games with pixies."

"How do you know about pixies?" Julian and his mother were literally the only two in the Tristan system.

"I'm a death wizard, I know about everybody."

As the sky grew darker, Julian noticed the silvery ribbon in her hair continued to shine, as if it had a light inside it. "Lights," he said. He had seen the woman before, on the advertisements for Death Tag. She was the competitor the bookseller had mentioned, who was typically the first to die.

She turned around and offered a hand. "Lilith. If we're stuck in this together, we might as well be a first name basis."

"What did you call this? A shadow realm?"

"Illusion magic." Lilith started off down the spiral path. Julian followed by focusing on her glowing hair ribbon. "Someone very talented can create a world that resembles the real one. Even to the trained eye, it can be difficult to see."

"How do we get out?"

"Well first, we're going to need some light."

Julian could barely see her now. He looked up. No stars. No moon. It was like a cloudy night. "You can do that, right?" He asked, hopefully.

"I'm a death wizard, not a light wizard."

"But everyone calls you Lights."

Lilith sighed. "Are you familiar with Kelli's Junkyard?"

"The shop that sells neon signs? From the old days?" Julian had been there once. It had been a cacophony for the eyes.

"That's the one. I'm friends with the owner. Did a favor for him once. My first time in Whitefall, I kept hanging around the place. The TV execs were even getting annoyed because I wasn't around for interviews after I died or whatever. They finally just interviewed me there. But that's why they call me Lights." She paused. "Why don't you bring us light? Aren't pixies supposed to be good at weather magics?"

Her ribbon stopped bobbing. Julian nudged closer. It was more or less all he could see now, though he imagined other, distant pinpricks of light. "I've never been particularly good with electricity."

"Well, I think you should give it a try." When Julian didn't respond, Lilith sighed. "Would you please bring us some light?"

Julian felt the snap in his spine. From deep inside him, something bubbled up, it ran down his arms, and out through his fingers, growing until he held a ball of lightning, roughly six inches in diameter.

Now he could see Lilith's face. She looked at him thoughtfully. Then a smile slowly spread across her face. "Would you get us out of here?"

He felt the snap again. This time, without thinking about it, he threw the ball of lightning into the air. It spread out across the sky, giving them flashes of light in the darkness. He looked at her. "Somehow, I don't think that worked."

Her eyes were on the sky. "Then you probably don't have the ability to get us out. But getting out is... somehow related to... a storm?"

Julian shrugged. "My mother understands the curse better than I do."

"It feels like a clue at least." Thunder boomed. "Oh no," she groaned as rain fell fast and cold on them.

"I blame you for this!" He tried to concentrate on directing the water away from them.

"There's a teashop across the street!" Lilith called. "We can figure this out from there!"

"Will it even be open?"

"It's better than standing in the rain!"

Julian followed her down the spiral path and across the street. Though sporadic, the lightning gave them enough light to see by, but it was harder to keep the rain off while they ran. The teashop was open when they arrived. They dashed inside. Lilith found the lightswitch. The lights flickered in the storm. Julian found the same bit of power that had wound through him to cause the storm and directed it toward the lights to stabalize them. "Old lights," he said, "still run on the old electric grid."

"We are in the old part of town." Lilith sat down at one of the tables. "Did you know this was the first tea shop in Whitefall?"

Julian joined her at the table. "For someone not from around here, you know a lot about the city."

"I've been here six times for Death Tag."

"Why do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Death Tag. I mean..." He drummed his fingers on the table, deciding how rude to be. "The god of death grants you what, fifty years of immortality, and you all use to slaughter each other on interplanetary television? It seems like a bad use of the gift."

He prepared himself for one of the usual responses. This was a way for death witches to blow off steam. It was a good catharsis for everyone--the audience could indulge in violent urges while knowing no one actually got hurt. Some even said it discouraged violent crime because criminals now knew what they were up against, not that there was any real research to show that.

Lilith didn't answer with any of those. "Well, I'm not in it for the killing and the dying."

"What?"

"I come to see my friends. Why do you think I'm the first person to die every year?" She spread her fingers out on the table. "There's not a lot of us, you know? It's nice to spend a few weeks with someone who gets it. But I guess I'm teaching the valedictorian, talking to a pixie." She stood and walked to the window. "Besides, it's a good cover."

"Cover?"

She looked back at him. "Didn't you wonder why we're stuck in this place? I don't think anyone's after you."

"Who's after you?"

"I don't know exactly. Have you ever been to Octavia?"

"I studied there for three years."

"I was born in Kulai. You know about the book bans?"

Julian nodded. Redlands was in the country of Aither, and he'd had several classmates who had come from Kulai due to decreasing access to books.

Lilith slumped against the window. "You can get a laser gun at fourteen, but you have to be twenty-one to get a library card."

This time the snap didn't happen in Julian's spine. "You're a smuggler, aren't you?" She'd turned around completely and grinned again. "I'd heard rumors at school," he explained.

"It started when I was seventeen, banning books from schools. And then banning kids from libraries. So we started a secret one. Then they started banning some books altogether, so we went across the border. Only now, other countries are following suit--Zagrad, Andos. So I joined Death Tag. And our secret library flourished." She threw her hands in the air. "At least, until my contact didn't show, and I got stuck in this place."

"Why do you need a contact? Books aren't illegal here."

"She gets books from work. That way it's harder to connect me to them. And she's an illusionist herself, so she could disguise us at the drop-off point."

"That's why the magic has been off at the temple recently. My aide noticed," he told Lilith when she looked confused.

"That's probably how our captor figured out where I was meeting her." She put her head in her hands. "I knew I shouldn't have waited for her to get that last book."

Julian stood up and joined her at the window. "Well, we can't just sit in the tea shop all day.... night... illusions can be broken, right?"

"Yes, but I don't know how to break this one."

He peered out the window, but he could barely see anything past the water streaming down the outside. "You said it had something to do with the thunderstorm."

"Well, I asked you to break it, and that's what you did. If it didn't have an effect, I'm not sure why you did it."

"I think we're going to have to go back outside. If you stand next to me, I can keep us dry."

"I live near a moor back home, so I'm used to the rain. And the humidity's wrecked my hair already."

Julian opened the teashop door and stood just inside it, pushing back any rain attempting to fly in. He looked up and down the street. At first, all he saw was the lightning and the rain. Then he noticed it. "Look." He pointed.

Lilith squinted into the darkness. "I don't see anything."

"That area there. It's not raining."

"How do you know?"

"I can feel it," Julian realized.

The two exchanged a glance and then plunged into the storm, running for the clear street. As soon as they crossed the intersection, they stepped on to dry pavement. Julian looked around. The shop walls were draped with ivy, and gas lamps, rather than electric or magi-tech lights lit the street. "There are lights." He paused. "Is this some accident?" It wasn't Whitefall.

"No, it's Kippel Way. They kept it like this because of all the antique shops." She laughed. "In fact, I think the bookstore owners are the ones who..." She trailed off. "Oh no."

"What?"

Lilith looked at one of the gas lamps above them. "I know how to get out."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

She moved her gaze from the gas lamp to the window of books in front of her. "There are twenty bookstores on this street." She opened the door to the shop and stepped inside. "I bet they didn't think I'd do it."

Julian lingered in the doorway. "It does go against your nature."

Lilith thumbed through the books in the window and selected two. She handed one to Julian. "I'm killed and reborn every year. The books can be too."

Julian opened the door on the gas lamp. "You're sure this is just an illusion, right?"

"If not, hopefully someone will stop us." That was not a comforting thought. Nevertheless, Julian placed the book in the flame, and when the corner caught alight, he tossed it into the store. Lilith followed. They walked down the street and repeated this at every bookstore they came to. As the flames rose in the last one, waves of heat came off it, giving way to the temple. As the illusion faded, Lilith breathed a sigh of relief. Julian blinked in the bright light. He could tell it was later in the day, but it was still not yet sunset.

"So this is your partner," said a voice behind them.

Julian turned and saw the fruit seller from Independence Market. "I should have known it was you, you quidnunc!"

"I have to say, I didn't think it was you," he responded.

"Wait, you think I'm a part of this?"

"But you spent three years on Ocatvia. That's how you met, isn't it? I almost didn't notice, until that book this morning."

Lilith turned to Julian. "You have my copy of History of the Development of Magic?"

"But I have to say, I didn't expect the famous Lights to be your accomplice."

"My accomplice? I'm not a part of this."

"Well you certainly won't be now." The man aimed a laser gun at Julian, who raised his hands into the air.

"I don't know if it's a good idea to shoot someone in a public place?"

"Illusion magic, remember? No one else will see."

Lilith threw out a hand toward Julian, as if trying to stop him from falling. "You don't want to do that," she told the fruit seller.

"And what are you going to do? Kill me? I'm not sure you can. You haven't even killed anyone on Death Tag."

"You won't kill me."

"That's the thing about Death Tag. I learned. You may come back, but you will die. Long enough for me to get you to a prison in Kulai. You can live out your eternity there." Lilith took a step toward him, but before she could do anything, the man fired.

***

Julian opened his eyes to see Lilith's face. He was laying on the ground and she was bending over him. "How are you?" she asked.

"Pins and needles," he groaned.

"Where?"

"All over." He gasped. "Am I alive?"

In response, Lilith looked to where the fruit seller had stood. Julian slowly pushed himself up on his elbows to see the man laying on his back, a hole blasted through his chest.

"Let me help you." Lilith grabbed his arm and pulled him into a sitting position. "Do you... remember who you are?"

"Julian Daye..." He looked at her and then at the fruit seller again. "He's dead."

"Yeah."

"He looks like he got shot."

"Yeah."

Julian knew the gun hadn't backfired. He actually remembered the blast hitting him. "You did something, didn't you? So that... whatever he did to me... would happen to him."

"It's like like making you a death witch. Very temporarily."

He looked at her again. "Your competitors. In Death Tag? They can't do that, can they?"

"No."

"So... you could win. Any time you wanted."

"I told you. I don't care about winning. Come on. I'll walk you home." She helped him to stand.

Julian continued to look at the body. "Shouldn't we... do something?"

"I contacted the proper authorities on my communicator. They know where to find me." She tugged Julian down the path toward the street.

"What will you tell them?"

"The truth. He tried to kill someone. I prevented it. It's not like they can't test for it."

"I have your book you know. Your contact couldn't get it because her employer saved it for me. You can come by the school and get it."

"Oh I'll be coming by. Somebody needs to check on you."

***

Lilith was as good as her word. She stepped into his classroom on the first day. "How are you?"

Julian nodded from his chair. "Alive. Shaken. I got a call about it. They asked me to make a statement."

"What'd you tell them?"

"That I was nearly killed? By a complete stranger? After apparently being locked in a... shadow realm? I don't know if I believe me."

"Whitefall has some of the best truth wizards in the system. It's how they keep us in check."

"Shadow realm?" A new voice asked. Julian looked up to see Emily. Lilith spun around, and for a moment, the two women stared hard at each other.

Emily broke eye contact first. She turned to Julian. "At Hayder Street Temple, right? The man they found there. He was a shadow speaker?"

"A what?"

Emily handed him a book. Julian looked at it. Singing Spells into Being. "That's what the author calls them. Because most people start out creating shadow realms by describing them in words. Like telling a story."

Julian nodded. "And they're called shadow realms because they're dark?"

Lilith smiled. "No. That's how you find them, if you know how to see magic. They look like a shadow."

"And you saw this?" he asked Emily.

She shrugged. "I guess."

"This is your aide?" Lilith said to Julian. When he nodded, she turned to Emily. "You should just tell him." Emily said nothing, so she turned back to Julian. "Fine. Professor Daye, would you tell your aide your most guarded secret?"

"I'm half pixie," he blurted out. Then to Lilith, he asked, "Why are you doing this?"

"Because it's incredibly amusing."

"I thought pixies were theoretical."

Julian turned to Emily again. If she was a death witch, like Lilith, she would know they were real. But no one else in Tristan knew about pixies at all. Unless... "You have the gift of understanding." Emily's blush was evidence enough. She had been born with an innate knowledge of the inner workings of magic. She had probably noticed his magic was different when they had first met, even if she didn't know why.

"No wonder the president made you my aide. You could be teaching this class yourself."

"I'd have to want to first." She shook the book at him, and Julian accepted it.

"What about field research?" He asked. She didn't say anything, but she turned her head to show she was listening. "I could use an assistant, and together, I bet we could find more of those theoretical ideas of yours that are real." She smiled for just a moment, but it was enough for Julian to know he was beginning to break through her facade of indifference. "Think about it."

"I will."

#original fiction #Tristan System #Julian Daye #worldbuilding #story cycle #short story #fantasy #book smuggling #Magic Manipulators

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