Midnight Magic Read online

  Oliver came trotting back, and Aurelai formed her own magelight globule, tossing it away for him to go harrying after.

  Playing fetch with, well, not a dog exactly, but a short fuzzy companion with a black nose and big ears, was one of life's simple joys, one Aurelai hadn't discovered until her third century. But in so doing, she was alive as never before. There was a light within her that had nothing to do with animata and everything to do with her happiness.

  Vimika made her happy.

  When had that happened?

  The return of Vimika's magic had solidified something nebulous between them, allowing them to get on with... whatever it was they had been doing over the last... however long it had been.

  Living, she realized.

  That was what they were doing. It didn't matter how long they'd been doing it. Poring over books, helping each other prepare meals, tending the garden, playing with Oliver. Talking, holding hands, spending their days and nights together... a lot more was happening than Vimika had been able to see, or had wanted to.

  Vimika watched Aurelai be completely normal in wonder. Not only had she not destroyed herself in madness or grief in her time alone, she'd grown from the experience. She was a better person for it! That kind of ability to overcome adversity made her even more formidable than Vimika had thought her to be, and that much harder to not be taken by.

  Aurelai was beautiful, kind, intelligent, and stronger than virtually anyone Vimika had ever met, there was nothing she could want in someone more.

  Vimika didn't believe in love at first sight, that was just lust that had been gussied up so you could tell your grandchildren about it, and so it had proven. But now, after weeks together, they were well beyond firsts and into regular life. Alarms rang in Vimika's mind at the thought, even as a thousand holes opened in her heart, waiting to be filled by the woman before her. Holes that had been opened before, every time more painfully for having to rip apart the scars that had formed the last time they'd closed.

  They had met as prisoners of separate jailers, and had promised to help free one another. For Vimika to escape the one she'd built for herself, she had to trust Aurelai. To the surprise of the self-assessment brought on by something that walked and talked an awful lot like contentment, Vimika did.

  Yes, Aurelai was odd, but who wasn't, really? There were gaps in her knowledge, but Vimika was coming to quite enjoy being a teacher, no matter the subject. The intermingling of their magic was potent to near inebriating (after long enough contact, she would say that it was), and they had settled into effortless rapport with so little effort Vimika hadn't even noticed it happening.

  "Vimika," Aurelai called.

  A response took several blinks to formulate. "Yes?"

  "Is there something wrong with me?"

  More blinks. "What? No... of course not. Why?"

  "It's just that you've been staring at me for a while now."

  "I... do you mind?"

  Aurelai flushed. "I can't say that I do. Though Oliver might have some feelings on the matter."

  At Vimika's feet sat a gilded fennec, eyes wide with anticipation.

  "I think yours taste better," Aurelai said.

  Vimika let another magelight globule distend from her fingers, but this one she didn't let fall, swinging it to and fro on a glowing thread of raw magic. Oliver leapt at it, swiping and biting, but he was limited by physics, while his object of desire was controlled by willpower alone.

  "He's never going to leave us alone after this," Vimika said through a broad grin.

  Aurelai knelt down, swatting at Oliver's tail in idle affection. "He's been good about it so far. He deserves to have his fun, too."

  Vimika took her eyes off Oliver for a moment, and the globule exploded, pinging off in seven directions. He bounded off after one, bowling over Aurelai and sending her tumbling onto her back.

  "Are you all right?" Vimika asked as she extended a hand.

  "Perfectly," Aurelai managed through her laughter. She took Vimika's hand. "Come down here and join me, would you?"

  Vimika settled onto the grass, chill against her back through the thin fabric. They stared up at the sky together, the high clouds afire with scarlet and orange, watching in silence as they were slowly extinguished by the eternity beyond.

  "Does the sky look different outside?" Aurelai asked.

  Vimika weaved their fingers together.

  "No. Everything is where is should be."

  Then the wind began to pick up, and the voice of the forest swelled alongside it, whispering and conspiring with the newborn twilight.

  Everything except them.

  The first stars began to appear. The Wolf's Eye. The Dagger of Kolom. The Wanderer.

  There was still much work left to be done before Aurelai could see the rest.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN ALL HER time at school, Vimika had only ever been punished for falling asleep at her books. Now, for the first time, after weeks of effort, she had been rewarded.

  They had spoken to her.

  There was magic in them all right, hidden in plain sight, because who would think to listen to a book? That was only supposed to be for old objects that absorbed magic naturally over time spans far longer than the life of the caster. To do it on purpose was as clever as Azrabaleth Kalinostrafal's reputation made him out to be.

  Too clever.

  "Boiled piss!"

  The sound of footsteps swishing on the bare walls preceded Aurelai coming speeding down the passage.

  Vimika couldn't bear to turn around. She knew the look on her own face, she didn't want Aurelai to see it. Or worse, share it.

  "You've been at this for hours. Come to bed," Aurelai said as she approached. Vimika leaned into Aurelai's arms as they snaked over her shoulders. Now that they were used to such contact, the need for it was nearly akin to pain after any time apart, but the garden had needed tending, the books listening.

  At least one of them had been productive.

  "I can't now. I have to start all over," Vimika said.

  The pause that followed was so pregnant it had an entire litter when it was over. It was birthed from Vimika's mouth in a long sigh. "These blank books have the basis for the illusions in them."

  "But that's wonderful!" Aurelai exclaimed.

  "It would be if I'd gotten here... I don't know, a century ago, perhaps?" Vimika's finger thudded down on the open page so hard it left a dent. "This is how it started. It's all here. But that shit out there is nothing like this. It wasn't just you. The magic itself evolved. There's all kinds of diagrams and hypotheses in here, I can see how he started, the underlying structure. But he kept working on it after he died!" Vimika swiped the book off the desk and it crashed to the ground with a satisfyingly awkward sound.

  "You're swearing too much, dear heart. You're tired."

  They had been so close. So close, and he had thwarted them again. Vimika settled her hand over Aurelai's, giving it a gentle squeeze completely at odds with how she felt. "If I may speak frankly with you?"

  "You don't need to ask me that."

  "I know, but I felt like I needed to preface it: your father was a right bastard," Vimika said.

  Soft laughter blossomed in her ear. "I've called him much worse."

  "Seemed only polite to ask."

  Surrounded by books that could very well add up to being one of the greatest libraries of magic in Atvalia, Vimika had no idea what to do next. The answer should have been here, and the fact that that was partly true made it all the more frustrating. It's as though he was teasing them. The magic needed to be written down, it was too complicated to keep in your head, even for him, and he'd known someone would come looking (or listening) eventually.

  He'd known all along, and going by the look and feel of it, he'd planned to keep working after he was gone. Wizards believed in an afterlife, but to just go ahead and forge your own was completely pants-on-head, upside-down insane, and Azrabaleth Kalinostrafal had pulled it off. He'd d
ied and gone to prison, and made himself the warden.

  Vimika craned to look at its only prisoner. For now. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be." Aurelai kissed her gently on the cheek. "It's just one more way that won't work. That leaves fewer to try."

  There was looking on the bright side, then there was blinding yourself so you couldn't see reality.

  Yet Aurelai was still here, still trying. "You're going to have to teach me how you do that."

  "Live without a choice and practice. There. Now, you've gotten your swears out, what are we going to do next? I've already tried everything I can think of. Earn your room and board, wizard." Aurelai's hands retreated to clamp down on Vimika's shoulders.

  "What are you- Oh!" Vimika piped as Aurelai began to rub with rough, insistent movements. Vimika held her tongue. She was going to need rough and insistent to get the blood flowing through her brain again, even if she did bruise afterward. She winced and hissed as Aurelai mauled her in ways Vimika's hands would have immediately cramped up attempting, but melted in gratitude all the same.

  The good news was that it worked, her mind was working again.

  The bad news was the conclusion it drew.

  "If we can't untangle it, we may have to destroy it. What about the alumita?" she asked.

  "I'm going to stop if you're just going to joke," Aurelai replied.

  "I'm not. It's there, isn't it?" Vimika pointed up.

  "Yes, and I was never desperate enough to try it. I thought about it, but I knew there would always be another way if I was patient enough. I wasn't about to kill myself out of spite. He would have won," Aurelai said.

  "He's your father! Whatever else he may be, I don't think he would have wanted that. Besides, it doesn't have to be a death sentence."

  "Has there been some breakthrough in alumita harnessing in the last 200 years? Is that why our people were decimated and live like second-class citizens? Because if you've managed to figure out how to safely wield the fundamental creation energies of the universe, I can't imagine you would let that stand for very long before you started vaporizing cities."

  As Aurelai spoke, Vimika found herself being ground into her chair, squashed until her face almost reached the desk. She squirted out sideways, twisting from Aurelai's grip to stare at her with a grimace she didn't try to suppress.

  "That hurts!"

  Aurelai stood with her hands on the back of the chair staring down at them. "I'm sorry."

  Vimika rolled her shoulders this way and that, and the pain began to ebb. "I didn't think it would be such a sensitive topic."

  "I was tempted, you know." Aurelai's gaze was hollow and distant. "To just... end it to spite him. Undo everything at once so we could scream at each other about it for the rest of time as wraiths. But I knew I could bear this... purgatory longer if I worked at it. And I have. You are my best hope, Vimika. Anyone else would see me imprisoned or dead. I am to them as Oliver was to you. A means to an end. Together I... we have a chance. I've never wanted to live more than since I met you, I can't risk the alumita."

  "I could. The magic field is dense enough, maybe it could even out the flow of discharge, lessen the chaos—"

  "No, Vimika! That's not why I brought you here, and I won't ask that kind of risk for my sake. No. There's always another way."

  "Finding it will take time."

  There was no mirth in Aurelai's smile. "We have a lot of that here, it would seem. And if there is one thing I have gotten very good at, it's waiting. When you first came here, I had hoped we could be gone quickly. But now... I don't mind a little more time together before I have to share you with the world."

  Heat crawled up the back of Vimika's neck and found her ears. "That's very sweet. I want that too, but the world out there isn't going to stop for us. It's almost spring, and it's hard to be presumed snowed in somewhere when there's no snow. If I'm not back by the time it's gone, people will start asking questions, if they haven't already. By now, Malivia probably thinks I ran off with the money. If she's mad enough, maybe even sent her house wizard after me to get it back. And since we don't know why I made it through the illusions, we can't say that they won't be able to do it, too. If what you say is true, then 'the world' may already be on its way. We have to do this ourselves, and quickly."

  "I will have to trust you on outside matters," Aurelai said, eyes downcast. She stared down at her hands still in the claw-like shape they'd gripped Vimika's shoulders in.

  "What is it?"

  "I didn't anticipate any of this. I don't... know anything. I never even considered that she would follow you, or even that she would pay you, let alone what I assume is a large amount of money?"

  Vimika nodded.

  "I didn't even know that." Aurelai sank into the chair. "I didn't think beyond my own desire to escape."

  Unable to stand the distance between them anymore, Vimika returned to Aurelai and knelt beside her. "It's understandable, though."

  "A lifetime of waiting, and it could all come unraveled because I couldn't anymore," Aurelai said in a voice quivering against her self-discipline.

  Vimika placed a finger under Aurelai's chin, gently raising her eyes. "That's the nature of risk."

  "Yes. But now everything feels more... real," Aurelai said. "I lived in my own head for so long, it became difficult to see possibilities beyond the ones I wanted. Things had gone wrong for me so often, I thought I only needed an outside perspective to fix everything. I didn't care about consequences anymore. Maybe I should have."

  Vimika shook her head. "Aurelai, this isn't over. Not even close."

  "I want to believe that. But I have no conception of time. At least, not the way you do. 'Soon' doesn't mean anything to me. By sunset? By the time true spring comes? Can I afford to while away any more time in your arms?" Aurelai reached for Vimika's hand, and she gave it without question.

  Magic tingled, their connection strong and steady. Or ironclad, given that Vimika tasted metal. Humans may have used the word 'chemistry' to describe the nature of their relationships, but for wizards it was more alchemy.

  Vimika curled her fingers through Aurelai's, locking them together. Tendrils of raw magic flowed through their joined palms, and they sighed simultaneously at the rush of the connection. "When I was lost in doubt, you rescued me. Now it's my turn. We want the same things, and face the same obstacles. But we will get over them. It's going to be even harder than we already thought, and painful, but neither of us is alone. One of us has already freed the other from her prison, that only leaves one to go, right?"

  Black eyes took on an extra layer of shine in the flickering magelight. "It does."

  "I will get you out of here, I promise. I promised when I arrived, and I am promising again. No matter what happens or how, you will be free, Aurelai. I swear on my life."

  The magic streaming between them took on a new intensity, but it was nothing like pain. In concentrated, pulsing waves, Vimika felt Aurelai respond even before she moved.

  When she did, it was with the same grace she showed when she danced and made love as she flowed out of the chair to kneel eye level with Vimika. "I accept. But I am no passive princess waiting in a tower. My prince has come, and I will help her however I can."

  "You know the Jewel in the Tower?"

  "There's more than just magic books in here. Literature, poetry, fairy tales. You'd be surprised what I know."

  "Then you should know that princes don't get kissed until afterward. I haven't done anything yet," Vimika said.

  "Yet."

  When their lips met, every hair on Vimika's body shot up at once, along with her heart rate. Veins swelled with Aurelai's passion and magic, and Vimika's mind began to race as though they were thinking as one, a thousand thoughts and images swirling around that were part memory, part imagination.

  No passive princess...

  Vimika jerked away with a wet smack to see Aurelai's eyes as wide open as her own.

  "You found me through Borrowed eyes! H
ow did you do that? How did you thread a magical field of that intensity in a way stable enough to maintain connection to the animals?" Vimika asked breathlessly, as though the words would evaporate if she didn't spit them out first.

  "Carefully..." Aurelai looked about, needing to gather thoughts that were whizzing around as fast as Vimika's. "It... it took awhile before I worked out I could use them as a kind of anchor. Father's spells don't work on animals, so they could pass through it, bringing me with them. I learned to thread the field without interacting with it directly, so it didn't activate. I always did it from the house to keep my body safe, and so I would know where I left it."

  Vimika nodded. She could almost see it as Aurelai said it. "And Oliver? You Called him, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but I didn't know it would work. I had no idea it was Father who had made him until he got here."

  "But it did work. How did you get the Call out?"

  Thoughts, images, ideas, all catapulting about Vimika's mind, so close to coming together...

  "Through Borrowing. I sort of... projected it outward from one of my Familiars."

  They slowed down to make sure they caught that last part.

  "You sent a Call through another animal?"

  "Is that bad?"

  "It's impossible! Wait, did it explode?"

  "Of course not!"

  "Then it's impossible! Or should be. How did you to do that?" Vimika asked with the nervous energy that came with knowing she was on the verge of something.

  "I just... did it. I was desperate."

  "But if you can get a Call out, and just need an anchor to lock onto..."

  Everything snapped into place at once, and Vimika smacked her forehead hard enough to hurt her ears more than her hand. "Mother's tits, of course! We don't have to undo any of this! I flew in, we can just fly out! We can relay the Summon through a hawk or something! It's sitting out in the snow, waiting for me! So stupid! Piss and hellfire, I could kiss you!"

  "Heaven forfend."

  Vimika bolted forward, knocking Aurelai onto her back to dole out her just reward.