Page 106 of A Tower of Half-Truths
Alain handed back the Compendium, and she returned it to her pack.
“The knowledge we keep in university libraries can be dangerous in the wrong hands,” he said. “Best to leave it to those with years of education and training, who know how to use that knowledge responsibly.”
She laughed. “Right, so you’re saying there’snever,in all of history, been a single wizard who misused that knowledge? That most forms of Necromancy, for example, were banned for the hells of it?”
He hesitated, and she gave him a satisfied smirk as he struggled to come up with a rebuttal.
“That’s a fair point,” he said, “but are you actually suggesting we allow common people unlimited access to arcane knowledge?”
“Why not? The way I see it, knowledge isn’t good or evil—it justis.And like you said, only those with the proper training will know what to do with it, so why not make it accessible to everyone? Why hoard books away in universities—or in private libraries, for that matter?”
Alain frowned. Mavery knew they were both thinking of the apartment at Steelforge Towers, the room filled with books. While Alain had used a few tomes for his research, the vast majority of his collection likely hadn’t been read in years. Mavery had even come across books with uncut pages. Was his library really any different than the one in Roven’s manor, or the scores of others she’d robbed over the years?
They returned to the trail, but Alain walked only a few paces before coming to a sudden stop.
“Look!” he whispered, pointing to something further down the path.
Mavery gasped. She hadn’t expected to find wild demonspawn so close to the city, but about a hundred yards away was a pair of kinchins.
They were feline creatures with the dark hair and red eyes of their fellow demonspawn. But to Mavery, they’d always looked like disgruntled balls of fur. Even full-grown kinchins, like the pairsitting a dozen yards away, were not much larger than bear cubs. Their lower fangs, too large for their mouths, protruded over their upper lips. Their whiskers and jowls drooped downward, giving their wide, squat faces looks of perpetual disappointment.
Alain’s cloak rustled as he pulled his notebook from his pocket. His movements were slow and careful so as to not frighten the kinchins. Mavery kept her eyes forward, focused on the beasts; beside her was the energetic scratching of a pen. But the kinchins didn’t notice a thing. The slightly smaller one—a female, presumably—had stopped to groom her mate, who looked displeased to be given the attention. Then again, kinchinsalwayslooked displeased, which was why Mavery found them so entertaining.
“Oh, this is amazing!” she whispered. “And to see two of them together outside of mating season…”
While most demonspawn traveled in packs, kinchins were solitary creatures. Once they reached adulthood and left their mothers’ dens, they would pair up during their brief mating season but otherwise spent the remainder of their lives in isolation. This pair was an exceptionally rare sight.
Alain chuckled softly. “It all makes sense now.”
“What does?”
“Your reaction to Enid’s hellhound. I should have known you were a cat person all this time.”
Mavery stifled a laugh, then peered at what Alain was recording in his notebook. He’d made a rough sketch of the kinchins. He was now working on a more detailed sketch of Mavery’s profile. He stilled his pen once he realized she was watching him.
Somewhere off in the distance, a tree branch cracked and plummeted to the ground. A thud rippled through the forest, and the kinchins sprung onto all fours. Before sprinting away, they emitted screams that sounded like the cries of human children; every variety of demonspawn had at leastoneunsettling trait. They scampered into the underbrush and vanished.
Alain moved off the path and sat on a fallen log, where he resumed his sketching. Mavery sat beside him. Instead of hiding his work, he angled his notebook toward her. She inched closer to him, thrilled to not only be his subject again, but that he no longerfelt compelled to keep this hobby private.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “I’ve never seen you look atanythingquitelike that.”
He added the final touches, then handed her the notebook. Even with rough pen strokes, he’d managed to capture her awe and delight from watching the kinchins. He waited patiently while she assessed his work, though his eyes were eager for her approval.
“I love it,” she said, passing the notebook back to him. “And you managed that while you were working…technically speaking. I’d say that’s proof that your hobbyisn’ta waste of time.”
He smiled, then slipped the notebook into his pocket. He turned to her, and his gaze softened as it drifted from her eyes, down to her mouth. Mavery’s breath hitched as everything—the breeze, her heartbeat, even time itself—seemed to go still.
But then Alain turned his head and stood up. “It’s getting late, and we still need to find a suitable place to work on the spell. Let’s get moving.”
They found a small clearing deeper in the forest. Scorch marks in the dirt, flanked by a pair of logs, indicated it had been used as a camping spot somewhat recently. While Alain filled their canteens in the nearby stream, Mavery sat on one of the logs and bound together the persilweed she’d picked along the trail. Unfortunately, they’d found nothing else of note; the forest floor had been cleaned of Ether-sensitive stones, and the other alchemical ingredients were too poisonous to handle safely.
When Alain returned, they laid out everything they would need for the experiment: his notebook, a handful of anchors, a vial of anti-Sensing potion, a stopwatch, and a syringe pre-filled with resurrection serum. Same as yesterday, Mavery hoped the latter wouldn’t be necessary.
She took a swig of potion while Alain set up the protective barrier. He’d stayed up half the night making revisions to the incantation, and he planned to practice it a few more times beforethe true demonstration began.
Though Mavery could Sense no violet auras, she could still detect a faintly flickering veil encircling the campsite alongside the gentle pulsation of magic in the air. Even with the potion, both seemed stronger than usual. Breathing in the pure forest air—rather than the stagnant, dusty air of Alain’s apartment—must have cleared her head and sharpened all her senses.
Alain paced in a wide circle as he practiced the incantation. Mavery, meanwhile, tracked him with the stopwatch.
