Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) (3 page)

Even if he hadn’t,
I
was now mixed up with them. And if I didn’t manage to learn more than I had up to this point, then we might end up as disappeared as my father.

“Yeah, well I’m not letting that happen to us. We’re going to figure out what we need to know to stay alive. Even if it means forcing Taylor to help us.”

T
aylor sat
on a wooden chair outside the garage, nothing but a soft light glowing overhead for her to see by. A large sketchpad lay open on her lap, and she made quick motions with the pencil. I resisted the urge to go and look over her shoulder to see what she was drawing. Anything that she would draw would be much more impressive than my best drawing. As an artist, she made a tagger like me look like a child working with crayons.

I pulled Big Red, the faded F150 that my father had left in the garage and Devan had managed to get up and running, probably rumbling along better than my father had ever seen it, into the garage. A series of patterns pressed into the steering wheel and the gearshift helped Big Red, but I think more of the magic came from things I couldn’t really see. It had survived much more than it ever should have and still ran just fine, almost as if it liked the craziness I brought it into. There wasn’t anything else fancy about the truck. No modern conveniences, only an old cassette deck that I hadn’t managed to tell if it worked since I had no cassettes, and a radio with the type of dial you had to turn to find the right station. It suited me just fine.

When I climbed out of the truck, Taylor looked up. She made a point of meeting my eyes and then turning to look at Devan. She seemed to know without me having to say that she had to convince Devan more than she ever had to convince me. She set the pencil down and closed the notebook resting on her lap.

“Oliver,” she said.

At least she didn’t use my first name. My father had named me Escher, probably thinking it some kind of joke. My mother gave me my middle name, one that I could use. I believed I would have even taken on one of the ridiculous names the Arcanus masters used if I had to be called Escher all the time.

“Yeah,” I said. I glanced over at the house. There were no lights on inside, leaving it looking dark, but I didn’t need any lighting to feel the patterns worked around the house and into the foundation. I had placed other patterns layered around the front of the house, too, making it as protected as I could. I suspected Taylor had added some of her own, as well, but had never seen her use them.

“You’ve been gone most of the day. Studying the Elder’s shed?” she asked.

I heard the distant note of longing in her voice as she mentioned the Elder. If nothing else, Taylor wanted to learn my father’s secrets. That had been part of the reason she’d come to Conlin. Maybe the entire reason; I still didn’t know. She claimed she searched for answers about Hard, her father—one of the Arcanus masters, but she hadn’t seemed all that motivated to go chasing after him. Not that I blamed her. If Hard had crossed the Threshold, he was just as likely dead. Without finding protection, as I had found the Trelking to keep me safe, painters on that side of the Threshold rarely lasted very long.

“Mostly sitting at the Rooster and eating lunch,” I lied.

Devan shot me an annoyed look. She might not be too fond of Taylor, but she felt I should still treat her with respect.

Taylor glanced at Devan and something passed between them. Woman talk, I suspected.

“What have you been up to?” I suspected she spent most of the day as she had before, drawing the sculptures my father had left scattered throughout the park. There was power in the patterns used on them, and power in the way they were placed around the park. The one I still had no idea about was Agony, the massive sculpture at the center of the park, shaped like some sort of demon man. Patterns of power were etched onto it, as well, only I hadn’t managed to understand them like I had the others.

“Mostly drawing. Thinking about my sister and whether I should return.”

I hadn’t known she had a sister, but it would be more reason for her to return to Arcanus. So far, she hadn’t asked.

“I think I found something,” she said.

“In the park?”

Taylor shook her head. “Not the park. Well, sort of the park. I was coming back from the park, when I saw it. I spent the day trying to get Agony of the Chase just right, and then I saw it.”

If anyone could recreate that sculpture, it would be Taylor. I certainly had never come close. Anything I made ended up looking like a caricature, almost as if the sculpture refused to allow itself to be drawn.

I turned toward the back of my lawn where it abutted the park. With the growing dark, it was nothing more than shadows for me. Even the lights I knew to be in the center of the park weren’t visible from here. “What did you see, Taylor?” I asked.

She stood and opened her notebook. On the page she’d turned to, there was a drawing of what my house must look like from the air. Somehow, she’d managed to visualize and draw it even though I doubted she’d ever seen it from that angle. At least, I didn’t think that Taylor had suddenly learned to fly. The house wasn’t at the center of the drawing, but at the top of the page. The detail she’d used to draw the house was impressive, even managing to create the right perspective and sense of depth with respect to where the garage was on the property.

The trees were laid out around the house, and she’d gone through what I at first assumed was the unnecessary trouble of marking exactly where each tree could be found. The trees in my yard were easiest to tell, but even those on the edge of the property as it began to blend into the park were well marked. It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. Devan saw it much faster.

“Holy shit, Ollie.”

I nodded, too dumbfounded to do anything else. Looking at it like this, I could see the way the trees created a steady spiral. There was no questioning the pattern. It was simple, but on this scale, it would be incredibly powerful, especially using something living like the trees. What wasn’t clear was what the trees spiraled around. With that particular pattern, it mattered.

“How did you see this?” Devan asked.

Taylor shrugged. There wasn’t anything smug about it. She was an artist and her ability to capture patterns was impressive. But I had some skill with patterns, too. Maybe not quite like an artist, but I wasn’t completely helpless. The time I’d spent training and learning among the Te’alan had given me a sense of perspective and nurtured my talent with the arcane patterns.

“I hadn’t noticed it before today, but when I was making my way through the park, I noticed that the trees seemed to be a specific distance from each other. That told me they were planted rather than cropping up naturally, and with everything else I’ve seen in this town relating to the Elder, I wondered if there might not be a pattern to them, too. I’ll admit, I wasn’t really expecting this,” she said, tapping the edge of the page, careful not to smudge her drawing. “But I should have known. When I used the trees for my…” She trailed off and looked at me, a horrified expression crossing her face.

“Yeah, when you used the trees to try and capture the shifters,” I said. I still didn’t know the pattern she’d used for that, but wasn’t sure I really cared. In order to make it work, the location of the trees would have needed to be pretty exact. Now that I saw how my father had placed the trees—and there was no doubting that it had been my father—I understood how she had managed it. The worst part was that I should have recognized it, too.

“Anyway, it wouldn’t have worked the way it did without the proper locations. I thought I had only gotten lucky. Now I wonder if maybe it was intentional.”

I laughed and glanced at Devan. “You think the Elder wanted you to attempt to blow up his house?”

“No, but he clearly had some purpose for the trees. I haven’t even learned the focus here, but there has to be one. Give me another few days, and I think we can work it out.”

Taylor didn’t know Conlin all that well. She’d been here a few weeks now, but there wasn’t much on the other side of the wall surrounding the park. The spiral basically ended where the park ended. We might find a few other trees, but nothing that would complete the pattern. That didn’t mean it hadn’t existed, only that whatever it had once been was no longer.

The greatest realization was simply the age of the pattern. Painters aged differently than others, living longer, but the trees throughout the park were massive. Most had to be over fifty years old. And if my father had planted them, he had done it long enough ago that they had the chance to reach this size.

Maybe this would be the carrot I could offer Taylor. I would help her learn about the pattern in the trees if she would help me recreate the orb, only this time, tagged with a pattern that would key it to me. I’d help her find what she could of this pattern in the trees, not just because she wanted to learn about the Elder, but because doing it would help me as much as it would help her.

“It’s not going to be trees,” I told her.

“What do you mean?”

I pointed to the pad, where the trees spiraled out. The pattern continued outward, the page she showed me only a part of something much larger. “There aren’t enough trees in Conlin to complete the pattern, but I’ll help you discover the rest. Knowing my father, it will take a different perspective.” Sort of like Taylor somehow managing to draw the trees of the park as if she simply soared above them.

I looked over to Devan. Would one of her little figurines be able to help? Could she carve one in the shape of an eagle and have it soar above the city? That wouldn’t require any real offensive magic, the kind she always hesitated using.

“That would be great, Oliver,” Taylor said.

“I need your help with something, too,” I told her. She waited, almost as if expecting me to ask her to do something horrible. Partly, I was.

“All right,” she started.

“I need to make another orb, sort of like the one we made for—”

Taylor started shaking her head before I had the chance to finish. “I was with you when the other orb was destroyed, Oliver. I know how much power they contain. I’m not sure even the Elder is aware of what the orbs are capable of.”

I was pretty certain my father understood exactly what the orb did. There was a reason he’d created it, probably the same reason he’d left it in the lower level of the shed for me to find. And it was the reason I needed to use it. If I could understand even a little of the power that Nik had begun to master, we might be able to stay safe. And wasn’t that what my father would want?

“This isn’t Adazi we’re talking about.”

“No, it’s you. You’re skilled, Oliver, I’ll give you that. In a lot of ways, you’re more skilled than me, but the power you’re talking about using is something else entirely. I don’t think anyone should be using that.”

I didn’t want to tell her my plan with Nik, but she probably already knew, especially given the reason Adazi had wanted the orb. “You understand why we’re here?” I asked Taylor. “What brought me from the other side?”

Taylor glanced over to Devan. Devan stood quietly watching us, not offering much in the way of argument. “I understand that her father is someone pretty powerful. I understand that you’re here because she’s running from someone. And I understand that you’re afraid that if you don’t learn enough that you’ll be in danger. I was there when he was free,” she said. We all knew which
he
she meant. Her old boyfriend. The painter who had once served the Trelking in the same way that I had, only he’d been cast aside when I showed more promise. Nik. “None of us are strong enough to stop him. We got lucky the last time. What if he gets free again?”

I patted my pocket. I’d taken to carrying the cylinder with me. It would be helpful to have a weapon like that if we were faced with some dangerous magic. Or if Taylor got out of line. “Then we give him the freezo again. Zap him. But if I can release him enough to teach me, there’s a lot that I could learn.”

“And then what? Why would he teach you?” Taylor asked.

I found it strange that Taylor seemed so rigid with this. After all, she had nearly opened the doorway that let hunters across the Threshold, all because she was searching for Hard. At least, that’s what she claimed. I’m not sure what to believe with her.

“I’d have to give him a reason.”

Devan eyed me, waiting. I suspected she worried about the same thing. There was really only one reason that Nik would have to help me: the hope of freedom. I could offer that, but in order for it to be believable, I might have to do something I really didn’t want to do.

“Exactly,” Taylor said. “There are other ways to power.”

Devan snorted. “Like modding yourself?” she asked.

Taylor touched her hair, smoothing it down. “I did what I had to in order to stay alive.”

“Ollie is doing the same,” Devan said.

“No, Ollie is risking everyone else to keep
you
safe,” Taylor said. She stuffed the notebook under her arm and started toward the house. When she reached the middle of the yard, she turned. “All the power you’ll need is here, Oliver. I think that’s the reason the Elder left everything he did for you. You might not believe it, but it’s here. Between his books, the statues, even the key, everything you need you can learn from him.”

She turned away before I had a chance to argue.

“She’s wrong,” Devan said.

“Of course she’s wrong,” I snapped, grabbing the chair Taylor had been sitting in and dragging it back into the garage.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Devan said.

“And just what way is that?”

Devan followed me into the garage. Inside was where she worked. The long bench along the back wall held her tools, each neatly organized. Once, they had been my father’s tools, but Devan had co-opted them as soon as she’d discovered the garage. A small stack of lump metal rested in the corner. She used that to make the charms for me and to make her exquisitely detailed figurines. A wide-based torch rested near the bench. I’d seen her use it to heat the metal as she worked, treating it like she was some sort of metal smith. Toward the front of the garage was a stack of old lumber, much of it rotted. Some scraps looked fine. An ancient table saw blocked off the stall at the front of the garage.

“Taylor said the Elder left you everything you needed. We’ve been searching for answers since coming here, but we’ve been asking the wrong questions.”