Page 20 of Strange Familiar

The process turned out to be even more laborious and time-consuming than he’d predicted. As difficult as locating the folded archives and extracting them from their hiding space had been, it was only the first step. Whoever had done the work of moving the extensive library of texts relating to the centuries of House Phel’s existence, had been beyond thorough. As Cillian worked the problem over long days, absorbing himself completely, he began to realize that the original feat hadn’t been accomplished in one fell swoop as he’d—in retrospect, quite foolishly—assumed.

Instead, in a progression so logical that he kicked himself for missing it before, it seemed that the tomes had been hidden one by one. He couldn’t be certain yet, but he theorized that originally a single book or set of documents had been slipped into that enchanted fold of space, which had probably been a relatively simple and small pocket to begin with, one just big enough to disguise one or a few texts. It could be that the first step had been an attempt to disguise or remove specific words or passages from that original book. He wouldn’t know until he found it.

Ultimately that meant getting to the core of a fantastically layered package. Likely, long, long ago, a second text had been added to the first, with the spell expanded, reworked, and repowered. Then, sometime later, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on. With each addition, the null space had been stretched and revitalized. It reminded Cillian of packing figures for one of his game sets, where he’d wrap one in a layer of cloth, then add another and wrap the cloth to include that, creating a layered bundle of the figures to set in a crate. He’d have to do that at some point—or have someone do it, if he never escaped Lady Harahel’s edict—go remove his belongings from the faculty apartment at Convocation Academy he’d occupied since graduating.

The prospect gave him a pang. He’d loved that little apartment, that admittedly little life. It hadn’t been glamorous, but it had been all his. And Alise had—

Don’t think about her.

Firmly setting those thoughts aside, he focused on the problem of unwrapping the archive. That’s where his analogy failed, because it wasn’t simply a matter of loosening the outer layer, liberating the books within that, then going to the next layer, as he would unpack his game figures. No, instead the enchantments had been woven together, the threads of magic deliberately tangled so they knotted in and out of intersections. Rather than a neatly packed set, Cillian began to envision the archive as an enormous spider’s nest, the hundreds of thousands of strands of silk cocooning the entire bundle, swathing it in threads he was forced to pick apart one by one.

It didn’t help that the entire thing remained in the null space where it didn’t quite physically exist. All of the work of picking apart and untangling, of extracting the enchantments by following a single thread to the nearest knot and extracting it from that tangle was mental.

The salon remained cozy enough—the archive obviously occupied no physical space, so they hadn’t needed a large room—with windows and a fireplace, a comfortable chair and desk. It had also been lined, floor, ceilings, walls, and windows, with a containment spell that was a variation on the silencing spell most wizards could employ to have private conversations. This one operated to contain all that metaphysically folded magic within the four walls, just in case. It had the happy side-effect of muffling all sound as well, and preventing anyone from entering without Cillian’s assistance, which allowed him to sink deep into the patient concentration required to unwind the mess one strand at a time.

At first he’d been tempted to cut the threads, but that initial impulse ended badly. The enchantment resisted that kind of violent treatment, actually flexing like something alive and responding to pain. It lashed out, sending a white noise wash of magic in all directions—and knocking Cillian ass over tea kettle. Apparently Lady Harahel had been prescient in storing the archive in the shielded room. Though it might have been nice for her to warn him. When he mentioned as much over dinner, she simply smiled, close-lipped and knowing.

After diligent and meticulous work over time—he frankly lost track in the timeless round of muffled days and lonely nights, the sameness of the work and the endless snowfall outside—he finally extracted a single book. It came free from the cloying enchantments, the sticky web of the whole resisting the loss of that single piece. But it gave, relinquishing the tome with a palpable pop! The book hovered improbably midair, spinning and shivering as the last shreds of resistance frayed, then completely released. It fell to the thick carpet with a gratifying thud.

Overwhelmed with excitement at a tangible result of the grueling effort that had yielded nothing until now, Cillian grabbed his notebook and leapt from his chair, though not without gently withdrawing his mind and magic from the folded archive, more practiced now at getting in and out without triggering a metaphysical explosion.

He approached the book carefully, as if it might be hot from a fire or liable to trigger another wave of blistering wizardry to singe his senses.

But nothing happened. Outside the globe of his magically isolated workspace, snow fell silently, in thick lacy flakes. Inside, the fire crackled, the smoke from the real wood tinging the air. Out of an abundance of caution, he knelt, examining the tome visually only, not touching it. When nothing seemed out of sorts, he probed it with his librarian-wizard senses, using his indexing skills to assess the publisher and age. It had come out of House Calliope, but centuries before. It lacked the indexing information that modern archivists applied to collections to make retrieval easier. A good Harahel wizard could find a relevant text from the content alone, no matter how poor the client’s description of what they were looking for, but having the spellwork embedded in the physical book to identify it made it locatable by lesser wizards and even mundane librarians with access to the right tools.

All of the older books in Convocation Archives had been retroactively tagged with this indexing, which was applied as a matter of course to new additions to the collection as part of the standard processing. That had been one of Cillian’s responsibilities on the quieter night shift, and he’d always enjoyed the orderliness of classifying the new books and formally adding them to the archives. So he knew full well that much older books than this had been indexed. The only reason this one hadn’t been was because it had been secreted in that folded space. Not that this told him anything he didn’t already know, but it added another data point and they might need all the data they could produce. Thus, he carefully noted the missing indexing.

Gingerly, he touched the embossed cover with light, questing fingertips. His wizard senses identified that it was bound like any other book from the era. Nothing else seemed unusual about it. Finally, he picked it up, noting down the title on the spine—Flora and Fauna of the Meresin Wetlands—then opened it and began copying down the publication information. Nothing about the book popped as unusual. It obviously was related to House Phel, if only tangentially, as the Phel lands were located within the larger area known as Meresin.

Not every high house named the lands they owned after the family. Elal did. Refoel did, as did Hanneil, Sammael, and El-Adrel. But others like Harahel, Uriel, and Ratsiel did not. In those latter cases, the high houses focused on intellectual property rights rather than land acquisition or in governing populations. For House Refoel, the land itself was relatively small, and they had set their closely guarded boundaries long ago to protect their neutral sovereignty and the vulnerable who took refuge there. In Contrast, Elal occupied a vast territory and seemed to be eternally looking to acquire more. People liked to joke that House Harahel had never expanded their ancestral lands because everyone there had their nose in a book and that wasn’t far wrong.

Naturally, the second, third and lower tier houses didn’t have eponymous lands—unless they’d once been a high house that had degraded to a lower tier, and even then their territories generally shrank, often by so much that their “land” comprised only a small area around the living quarters, sometimes no grander than a mundane farm.

Regarding House Phel and Meresin, however—especially given that Phel had been one of the original high houses—it was passing odd that the land was called Meresin and not Phel. With their traditional combination of magic specializations in water and moon magic, Phel didn’t seem to have an emphasis in the non-physical realms, like Harahel with knowledge and Uriel with administration, that would distract them from land ownership. Indeed, from what Cillian had observed, the denizens of Meresin regarded themselves as beholden to House Phel, even generations after the house itself and family ceased to be.

At any rate, a perusal of the table of contents didn’t reveal anything that waved a flag saying “this is dangerous information regarding the fall of House Phel and should be hidden away so no one can see it!” Neither did a more thorough assay with his library magic. It hurt his librarian’s heart to consider the likely truth: that this book might’ve been hidden away categorically and entirely because of its association with Meresin and House Phel, and not because it contained any specifically damming evidence. The author who’d labored over the research and writing, the editors and publishers who’d made sure it would be this beautiful volume, all of their effort had vanished into the nothingness of that folded space. Instead of taking its rightful place in the archives, the book had fallen into a nearly eternal obscurity. And for what?

Well, that was the question.

Or, one of them. The next question was whether a copy of the same text existed in the House Harahel archives, as there should be, since they were intended to be identical.

After that came the monumental task of reading the books for clues. This was but the first book of possibly thousands. Cillian hadn’t been able to tell how many nestled inside the vast cocoon of sticky-threaded enchantment.

He set the book aside for someone else to pursue the verification in the Harahel archives and went back to his chair, clearing his mind to extract the next book, hoping the process would begin to go faster. When he’d first envisioned this project, he’d imagined Alise beside him, with her serious mien and deepwater calm presence. They’d have shown each other fascinating tidbits and shared kisses and hot chocolate.

But Alise was gone, and no doubt happier for being away from him. Allowing himself one more nostalgic moment to miss her, he then bent mind and magic to his never-ending task.

~ 11 ~

Alise and her father rode in his carriage to House Elal. It was even more elaborate than the Elal carriage that had been stored at Convocation Academy that she’d taken without permission. Her father only commented on that theft by saying he’d arrange to have it returned to Convocation Center, in case Nander had need of it.

Lord Elal’s personal carriage was grand and large enough that they each could pretend the other didn’t exist for some time. He’d traveled to House Phel under an invisibility veil made by his cadre of spirits. That, and his superior ability—not only to Alise, but preeminent over all wizards wielding spirit magic—had allowed him to slip through the guardians she’d set to alert House Phel to intruders. She’d been a fool, not predicting her father’s next move in their cold war.

Nic and Gabriel had objected to her departure, of course, as had all the minions at House Phel, quietly or loudly offering to fight for her. All it had taken, however, had been the smug, triumphant look on her father’s face for her to refuse them all. He’d expertly arranged it so that either Bria or Alise would return to House Elal with him, to be molded into a dutiful heir. At least Alise had some chance of withstanding the molding; she’d never subject an infant to the man, let alone her beloved niece.

For quite some time, Alise refused to speak to the man who called himself her father. That bit of spite satisfied her until she realized her silence suited him just fine. He sat in his section of the carriage, tended to by various servile spirits, steadily working through correspondence brought and taken away by an unending stream of Ratsiel couriers. He was probably delighted that she’d elected to keep her mouth shut. Well, enough of that.

“Why not Nander?” she asked abruptly.

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