Page 87 of Bonds of Magic
But what else was new? I’d hunted down plenty of people who would have been happy to see me dead. And I’d been in danger since the day I said no to Argus. He’d wanted me under his thumb, and if he couldn’t have that, he wanted to kill me himself. I was his number one target.
Number two, whispered a voice in the back of my mind.Don’t forget Cory.
After all, it was Cory who’d had tenelkiri after him before he even got to Vesperwood. Cory who’d almost been kidnapped by Jude. It looked like I’d fallen a spot in the rankings.
Where was Cory right now? He should be in his room, or maybe the library, safe and sound. There was no reason to think he was in trouble. To believe he was out here.
No reason—except for his habit of turning up in the most dangerous place he possibly could be, exactly when he shouldn’t.
I was gaining on the sounds in front of me, but I had to be careful. Someone making this much noise probably wasn’t very aware of their surroundings—unless they were a decoy, luring me to a predetermined spot.
I followed whoever it was for another few minutes until the sounds suddenly stopped. I halted too, sidling up against a pine and peering into the woods ahead. It was just more trees, as far as I could tell. Not even a clearing. But twenty feet ahead of me, there was a large mound on the forest floor, and in the dim light, I could barely make out a human figure bending over it.
I stilled my body, scarcely daring to breathe. The figure appeared to be talking, but it was low enough that I couldn’t make out the words. Suddenly, a ball of light appeared, spinning in a circle above the mound, which turned out to be a cairn of stacked stones about three feet in diameter.
The figure bending over it was Hans.
I blinked. What was it Teresa had said about him?Skulking about the grounds at all hours of the night? Maybe she’d been telling the truth.
Hans was still bent over the cairn, his hands moving in complicated patterns. Four smaller lights appeared around the cairn at waist-height—blue, green, gold, and red. As they appeared, he straightened and stepped back.
His voice rose, and he moved his hands in a circle, then a straight line up and down. Thin bands of shining white appeared between the four colored lights, creating a diamond, or a circle, that Hans stood outside of.
His voice rose even higher, and even I could tell that he was calling someone, or something. His tone was entreating, then commanding. The light above the cairn spun faster, and the four colored lights began to spin as well.
Finally, Hans called out, “To me!” and fell silent.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the tree trunks on the far side of the cairn shimmered. The air above the cairn began to flicker, then solidify. A shape appeared, gaining color and opacity. One second it was still swirling lights, and the next, a…spirit…hung in the air above the cairn.
I didn’t know what else to call the being that I saw. They were about the size of a housecat, but stood erect on two legs. They appeared to have wings growing out of their back. There might have been the suggestion of a face, but the spirit was fluid, as if made from golden flame. No part held steady for long.
“Who has called me?” the spirit asked. Their voice was surprisingly deep for such a small creature.
“I have.” Hans stepped forward. He spoke portentously, like he was addressing an audience of thousands instead of one.
“And who are you, mortal?” asked the spirit. They flickered, and their wings disappeared, but a tail appeared instead, a long, coiled cable of flame.
“Hans Stahl,” Hans said, still attempting to sound older and wiser than he was. “Witch and Harvester. Invoker of the ancient magics. Caller of the Earth Spirit Loshenrill.”
“Ancient magics,” said the spirit, which I figured was probably Loshenrill.
If I didn’t know better, I would have said they sounded sarcastic. Did elemental spirits understand sarcasm?
“And which ancient magics do you control?” they asked Hans.
“The storm of the sea. The fires of the deep. The call of the void that holds you in its grasp. I have tapped the heart of the forest. I have set the stones of binding. I call on you to do my bidding.”
His voice was still pompous, but a thread of doubt had crept in.
The spirit, which had lost their tail and flickered into something vaguely fish-shaped, with fins and gills, seemed to notice too.
“And what would you bid me do?” they asked. Their voice was still too deep for such a small, ephemeral creature, and they didn’t sound the least bit concerned about being bound to the heart of the forest, or whatever Hans had done.
“Give me your power,” Hans said haughtily. “As a familiar to its master, you will aid me in all my endeavors, for I have bound you to my will and made you mine.”
“Yours?” the spirit said. They took the shape of a bird now, but with a mermaid’s tail. “You would make meyours, human?”
“I would,” Hans repeated, but his arrogance was slipping. “Would, and have. You are fettered to my body, your magic tethered to mine, for as long as the stones of binding remain.”
