Page 39 of Tempest

“The god of dreams is always a mortal first,” Iason said. “It’s the same with Death, and Art—though we’ve gone without Art for some time. Desire, War, and I are not mortal at all, though my siblings are shaped by humanity. And there are other types of beings, spirits that aren’t quite gods but aren’t mortal, either. Humans have no real understanding of the scope of the world.”

“I don’t think we should.” Iason took a turn in the tunnel, following the dim memory he’d only just grasped that afternoon. “It would drive us to drink. Here, there’s a door in the floor somewhere. I remember that much.” He started tapping his foot on the stone, listening for a hollow echo. He handed the light ball to Levi so he could get on his hands and knees and finally found the seam of a trapdoor just before another turn. He pried it open, and a gust of cool air blew in his face. His stomach turned uneasily, an old fear rising even without memories to give it weight, and Iason shivered. “This is it,” he said. “Down here. This is where they used to…”

“Torture you?” Levi said.

“Train me.” Iason groped for a ladder on the side of the hole, found a rung, and started to climb down.

Memories flickered through his mind as he descended. Himself as a boy, just a few months after his disastrous attempt to summon a demon, following a man whose face he couldn’t remember into the dark. Alistair just above him, urging him to stop being so fussy and jump down. Hauling himself up, later, one-handed; being carried by magic—or not going up at all but lying on the floor somewhere below while the others left for the day. And the man again, the one whose face was lost to him, leaning over Iason and stroking his hair.

I’m proud of you, Iason. You’ve served me well.

Iason landed heavily at the base of the ladder. The rooms beneath the crypts were more comfortable than they should have been—in the light of the globe, Iason could see a hallway and open arches, rooms with books and benches, weapon racks and worktables. Iason paused at the door to the first room, which was empty save for a few shelves on the wall.

“That’s the room from your memory,” Levi said. Iason could feel Levi’s warmth at his back, and it was strangely comforting. “Where that man had Alistair break your arm.”

“Yes. I think I was here often.” Iason made himself walk through the archway. Others had clearly used the room since he was last there—long scrapes on the stone floor showed where furniture had been rearranged—but now that the space was bare, he could see familiar scratches on the far wall, and he walked over and crouched down. He brushed away dust and peered at crude, childish scribbles carved into the stone. There were a few names, some he didn’t recognize, and the image of a bird he’d clearly spent some time on.

“I slept here, now and then,” he said. “When I couldn’t make it home.” The drawing of the bird made him feel strange, outraged on behalf of the boy he could barely remember being. “What was it Lazaros said? We’re easier to break when we’re young.”

How badly had he broken? Perhaps he’d been like a beaten dog, still loyal despite everything, craving any small affection. Sophie had craved kindness, too, abused by her aunt and so alone that the empathy of an assassin was enough to earn her loyalty. What if Iason had turned that loyalty toward making her a copy of himself? A person who would kill for him—die for him?

The thought made him recoil. He stood, turning away from the drawings. “There’s nothing useful here.”

The next room was a disaster. It was clearly an office of some kind, but it was in the process of being systematically ransacked, with piles of papers stacked in one corner and books tossed in heaps. Iason stopped Levi in the doorway and gave him a warning look.

“Someone has been here recently,” he said, nodding to the footmarks in the dust. “I need to cast a spell, but I don’t know if it will work and I… Just don’t go in.”

Levi rolled his eyes and stepped back, and Iason reached for his power. He could sense magic in several objects in the room, including some of the books, but he didn’t touch those. Instead, he tried to focus, fumbling through his magic to make a spell from scratch.

“Ellas,” he said. “I need any paper that saysEllas.” He held out his hands, picturing the word, paper, ink—but the image of the bird in the stone kept coming to him, and when Iason pushed his magic out, a page lifted from the stacks of paper and folded itself into the rough shape of a bird. So did another, and another, until a flock of paper birds fluttered around him, drifting on his magic.

Iason tried to suppress a smile.

“That spell was almost whimsical,” Levi said, and Iason reached out to grab one of the birds.

“It’s funny.” Iason started unfolding the paper. “I always viewed magic as a useful tool for other people. Perhaps that’s how I was meant to see it.”

He made the birds fly around Levi, and Levi caught one of them and unfolded it as well, looking it over. Together, they compiled the pages the spell brought them, and Iason tucked them into his pockets to examine at home.

Before he left, he drew on Levi again, just a touch.

“I’d like anything with the wordwizard,”he said, and a box rattled in the depths of the office. It burst open, and a cloud of paper birds rustled over, more than before. Iason hurriedly unfolded them, and as he did, he caught snatches of writing that made him pause.

“Demon reports the boy is more amenable to leaving Mislia after the loss of his sister,” he read. “Alistair can continue our work without her negative influence.”

“Cataclysm imminent,” another said. “Highly volatile without foundational magical knowledge. Alistair knows the risks. Continue as planned.”

“They just call youthe wizardorthe boy,” Levi said, skimming a page. “Never your name.”

“Easier to use someone if you don’t think of them by name.” Iason paused. “I learned that somewhere. Here, I suppose. Alistair and I, we never called the light mages by their names, either.”

“My brother, the god of dreams, names everything. He named a shell I gave him in a dream and treated it like it was a puppy.”

Iason twisted round to look up at him. “How are those remotely the same?”

Levi shrugged. “He did care about that shell.”

Iason shook his head and gathered the rest of the papers. “We’ll have to look at these later. I think the other room was a rest area of some kind, so it’s probably in the same state of disrepair.”

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