Page 55 of The Spell Caster

“Thank you, I will.”

My mother gripped my elbow, motioning with her eyes for me to turn my attention to the circle. Calamus looked up and nodded once.

Hawkish Councilor Quince cleared his throat nervously. “It seems like we’re just about to get started.”

Magic rose in the room. At first it was a subtle hum, then increased to a discordant and oppressive sensation that lifted the hairs on my arms and rattled my teeth. Fate, Calamus was dumping in a ton of magic. Maybe Costi had been right about blowing things up. Even the complicated summoning circle paled in comparison to this working.

The circle caught and began to light, fire whipping through the lines, dancing toward the boundary. It was beautiful.

Calamus continued to pour energy into the structure as he added the final stroke, completing the figure. Then he jumped backward. With an inaudible boom that stirred our hair and clothing, magic erupted in a swirling column, dazzlingly bright.

This was like nothing I’d ever heard of before, and Councilor Grey’s stunned face told me he didn’t have any more experience than I did. My mother stared without visible reaction, gripping my arm tightly and holding me in place.

As suddenly as the light had exploded, it collapsed, falling into the core of the burned-out circle and leaving a glowing mass. Afterimage spots floated in my vision.

The silence was broken by Calamus’s hiccupped laugh, which he tried to cover up by clearing his throat.

The councilors, my mother, Hazel, and I crept forward, stepping over the burn lines to peer at… whatever this thing was that had been created. It was a vaguely oval shape floating in the air, shot through with twisting vines of fire. As we watched, the surface solidified and began to harden and clear, for a moment reflecting our shocked faces back at us.

Then the mirror turned translucent, and we were looking into another world.

***

I owe Calamus an apology, I thought faintly.

Councilor Grey strode up to what we could now see was a window to elsewhere. Slightly larger than a full-length mirror with jagged edges lined in metallic vines, it seemed affixed to the air at about waist height. There was no sense of distortion, such as looking through glass or over a video screen. It was like seeing into another room through a doorway—as if we could walk right in.

Looking through, I could see a space illuminated with something like witch lights—less bright than electric bulbs and steadier than fire. The entire scene was taken up by shelves, which were crammed full of stacks of books and a hoard of strange artifacts. Bottles, statues, scrolls, metal ornaments of unknown purpose—even some sort of horned animal skull—all piled and stacked haphazardly.

“It’s… it’s a bookshelf,” Hazel said to Calamus in front of me, sounding dazed.

“A storage closet, maybe?” he responded as they both tilted their heads, trying to get a different angle.

“Look at the text on the spines!”

The chatter cut off abruptly as the two jumped back from the mirror. Councilor Grey straightened in alarm.

Behind them, I craned my neck to see what they were reacting to.

Someone had joined us on the other side.

A striking masculine figure with a bucked cuirass of black leather worn over his otherwise bare chest looked back at us. He could have been mistaken for an exceptionally beautiful human, perhaps an outsider with his straight blond hair. If not for the sharply pointed ears. And the grayish cast to his skin. And the dark horns curling back from his head.

This was definitely not a familiar. But what else could he have been but a demon? We were looking into Hell.

He seemed as surprised as we were.

The demon tilted his head. He spoke unfamiliar words in a low, melodious voice, the inflection rising at the end in a question. He extended an elegant finger with some sort of glove on it and tapped the surface of the magic. It rippled like water as he examined it.

“Can you understand me?” Councilor Grey addressed the creature. His voice sounded tight.

“Isstu mol coentrin,” the demon said, peering cautiously at us.

“Hazel,” Grey said without turning.

The witch looked back at us uncertainly with wide greenish eyes. She evidently hadn’t expected this to work any more than I had.

“Go ahead,” Rhodes encouraged her gently.

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