While I had been preoccupied with the Warmaster, the other two men had taken their seats … and neither of them needed an introduction. The Scholar was draped in dark robes, his thick belt weighed down by small vials, several scroll cases also dangling. His hair was like the Weaver’s, though there was a little more gold mixed with the moonlight. It was shaved on the sides, the top threaded back through the use of a thin black chain. His eyes were the palest violet, almost white, and his infamously short temper hovered by the hard edges of his mouth. He was of the Sinn cast, as powerful with his mind magic as the Weaver was with his fate magic, as the Warmaster was with his war magic, and the King was with his soul magic.
I blanched, realising what was happening a little too late. The final person was, of course, the most powerful living Eloi, completing the fifth sector as yet unaccounted for. Those of the spirit magic.
The Inquisitor.
Each of the five men were considered the frontrunners in their magical arts, the singular master of their sector. It bothered me that none of them were women, but it bothered me even more that they were all so…
I squinted, trying to put my finger on it. Similar? No, that wasn’t right. They were all completely different, and yet, they seemed to be in a category populated by only the five of them. They were bigger, smarter, stronger, and more perfect than even the other sectorians. It was eerie.
“Inquisitor,” the Captain’s tone had gained a distinctly sharper edge. “Shall we begin?”
The Inquisitor nodded, standing from his chair and walking toward me. I realised that all the seats had been claimed, and the platform beyond the dais had been slowly filling with people. Either word had spread as the King travelled to the Citadel, or the crowd surrounding us were simply accompanying the various important persons sitting on the dais. The small council comprised, I was guessing, of the four women and two men whose names or titles remained unknown to me. They would have each brought a handful of assistants and advisors. The King would have brought a regiment, the Inquisitor a personal guard, the Warmaster rarely travelled alone, and there would be those within the Skjebre and Sinn sectors who would have trailed after the Weaver and the Scholar simply to satisfy their predictions, as the fate and mind magics often demanded.
The Inquisitor stood before me in the way that a landslide stands before a crude hut. He had dark eyes, like mine, but different. Where mine glimmered, his swallowed. Mine were a shimmering surface; his, a deep, endless aperture. His cheekbones were high and sharp, the arch of his brows perfectly elegant. His hair was somewhere between short and long, the lazy waves pressed behind his ears; there were no rings or metal clasps in his hair, but several dark bronze dots pierced into the arch of his left brow. He looked more like a warrior than a political man, and the assessing nature of his eyes had a dangerous edge that chilled me.
Instinctively, I tried to back away from him. My chains clanged too loudly, pulling taut against the iron ring. He ignored my attempts to gain space, taking another step forward until the subtle heat of his body brushed against my front.
“I’ve been told that you cannot speak?” he asked, his voice a soft roll of power.
I shivered, delivering a swift nod, my eyes averted. The Eloi magic was the most mysterious of all the sectors. It was not solid, of the body, as the Vold magic was. It was not of the mind, as easily mapped and dissected as the Sinn magic. Though the fate magic of the Skjebre grappled with vast and frightening concepts, it was still tangible, easily understood. We all feared our dreams and our fates. The soul magic of the Sjel sector was a little less structured, though it still dealt with earthly concepts. Love, desire, manipulation. The Sjel magic could heal the body through a gentle coaxing of the soul. A Vold could never do the opposite, healing the soul through the body. These things were understood. The Eloi magic was simply … not understood. Matters of the spirit were not easily grasped.
The Inquisitor surveyed me, perhaps wondering if I lied before he set a hand against my shoulder, his power whispering into me so softly that I would have completely missed it if I hadn’t been waiting for it. The spirit magic was mysterious because it was the power of magic itself. It was a skill of binding and unbinding, of seeing inside a person and tasting what lay there. It was the Eloi who had first bound magic to objects, and while the other sectors were now able to layer their magic onto existing objects, they were still unable to create original artefacts without the Eloi.
“She is as you suspected, Captain.” His words whispered over the room as softly and as effectively as his magic whispered through me, coaxing at the little cupboards of my mind and burrowing into the secret places of my heart. He was hunting down my power. When he found it, tucked away deep inside my chest, his fingers tightened on my shoulder as his eyes slipped from my face to the front of my chest, as though he could see though cotton and skin alike to my bubbling center.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Exactly as you said. She overdid herself, and her magic has retreated, but she indeed has the power of the Vold.” As he said the words, his eyes worked their way back up to my face, and there was the slightest crease to his lips. A … smile?
It disappeared as he turned to address the others, his fingers slipping away from me. “Shall we see what the dead have to say about it?”
Without awaiting an answer, he walked to the King and held out his hand. The King produced a small box, handing it over, his green eyes never shifting from me. The Inquisitor pulled my hands up, levering my clenched fingers open. He placed the box into my palm, and then stepped back to his seat.
“Go ahead.” His eyes settled on my face. “Open it.”
I stared at the little box, my stomach curdling.
“It must be a familiar soul,” the Inquisitor insisted in his soft, low voice. “The soul no longer belongs in this world. It will only reappear at the insistence of a familiar presence. Is that not right, Vidrol?”
“Correct,” the King grunted. “You must be the one to call it out, girl.”
I looked between them, and then to the others. When I got to the Weaver, I found myself captured, the lake reflected in his irises, his head inclining ever so slightly, his influence pouring through me like water as the mark on my face burned hot. I winced, my free hand flying to my cheek. Several of the others glanced at the Weaver, and a wave of whispering rolled over the gathered people beyond the dais. The Captain was frowning deeply, a vein visible at his temple. The Warmaster, the Scholar, the King, and the Inquisitor all smiled.
Open it, the Weaver mouthed, and my hands obeyed without my permission, releasing the little latch and opening the lid. It was worse than the influence of the Dealer’s collar. The mark on my face gave birth to an urge within me, a secret need to fulfil the requests of the man who dangled my fate before me.
A ghostly apparition filled the air, escaping the box. It was me, standing in the doorway to our cottage.
“You stupid, stupid girl.” My mother’s voice echoed everywhere, causing me to flinch back, my chains clanging again. Gooseflesh raced painfully across my skin.
The apparition became muddled, focussing on my face, on the fear and still-reeling confusion filling my eyes.
“It was a mistake…” My own ghostly voice followed my mother’s, and the image became muddled again, shifting to a view of Breakwater Canyon, and then to the image of a man’s back.