In the Veins of the Drowning(80)

My heart clanged like an incessant noontide bell. The room was brightening. Theodore roused, but only just enough to scoot closer. He pressed his sleep-warm body against mine, gave a low hum, then draped a heavy arm over my middle. I adjusted the book around him and read on.

The first spell performed was one of goodwill. The Mage provided a prophecy for a woman who was increasing with child. She used a single drop of blood, a round of the mother’s fatty flesh, and a potion of seawater and smoking herbs. The mother wished to know the child’s future and fate, as she had been suffering from portentous dreams. The Mage predicted the babe would be a great seer. The Mage called the babe Rohana and saw that she would advise and protect the Leucosian archipelago for a great many years.

But at that time, the Mage did not yet know that her new magic was wholly unlike the power of the Great Gods. The magic used for spell work has a limit, and a price. With time, the Mage began to weaken, realizing too late that she needed to find a way to replenish what her magic took. It ate her body away, and what had once been robust and vital grew small and feeble.

The Mage’s magic had earned her certain acclaim. She was known throughout the realm, just as the Great Gods were. Some feared her, some were awed, and others cursed her, unwilling to trust a rare magic they could not understand. As her health declined, so did her ability to perform spells. When her notoriety dwindled too, a madness set in. She began to seek out past payment from those she had served, and while some chose to pay her out of fear, many did not. For the price was steep.

There is a strange account regarding the mother to whom the Mage had given a prophecy. Based on the account given by the young girl, Rohana, this is what I know:

The babe had grown into a child when the Mage came to her mother for past payment. By now, the Mage’s body was so used up that she’d hired herself companions to carry her across the archipelago. They took her to the northern shore of Varya, where the mother and Rohana lived. She entered their small home without invitation. She left two days later with her muscles renewed of their vigor. Her body was once again whole, her clouded eyes bright, and her skin taut once more. Rohana’s mother was not seen again.

From then, the Mage consecrated the Sacred Holms as the ritual site for Varya’s magic. She tied herself to the soil and sea on a little island there and was able to sustain herself, beaconing seekers of her power to come to her, and conserving her meager energy. So has every island’s Mage created a sacred ritual spot to sustain themselves and perform their craft.

“Bloody Gods.” I raced to the next page, needing more, but it only gave me rules and laws pertaining to the Mage Seers and their magic. A long list of the divine lineages sat on the page beside. Rohana’s hut rose to the front of my mind. Bones had littered the floor, human and animal alike. I thought of Theodore’s story of performing the ritual of transference. He had not been able to take his father’s body with him from her awful, rotting hut. I understood why now—it had been payment.

“For the price was steep,” I whispered to myself, caught in a dark rush of thought.

Theodore stretched out beside me, a honeyed sound rolling through him. I let him pull me closer, desperate for the contact. Cold terror had seized me.

I glanced at the book once more. The page where the lineages were recorded resembled a web of soft black lace. Jesop’s writing was small and precise, the lines connecting the names penned in the thinnest threads of ink. I found the Great God Panos’s name first. He was the first in a line of two younger brothers and a sister, all created from the past generation of Gods of the earth. Panos’s line dropped down to Theodore’s father, Athan. The book was too old for Theodore to have been recorded in it, but his older siblings were. Three of them, and every one had passed before their tenth year.

I saw Ligea next. There were no delicate lines dropping from her name, but there was one line that jutted to the right. A younger sibling.

My body jerked when I read the name.

Eusia.

Eusia. My mother’s sister. The First Mage. The monstrous thing that fed on my power and hunted my kind had been the First Mage of the realm.

“Theo.” I shook his shoulder. “Theodore, wake up.”

His fingers curled into my side, and he gave a sleep-thick groan. “What’s wrong?”

“I found something. Tell me of the First Mage’s execution. Didn’t you say she was killed?”

He blinked, rubbed at his eyes. “I think. If I remember my lessons correctly, she was disemboweled and thrown into the sea off the coast of Anthemoessa.”

“Anthemoessa?” I shook my head. The Sirens’ home island was far west and now it was uninhabitable due to blight. “She made Rohana’s island on the Sacred Holms her ritual spot. How would she have gotten to Anthemoessa?”

He shook his head sluggishly. “I’m sorry, Immy. I don’t know. Maybe Agatha would.” He pressed a trail of slow kisses over my shoulder, down my arm, but even as his touch poured an indulgent heat through me, I couldn’t give myself over to it.

“Eusia is the First Mage,” I whispered. “She was—is—Ligea’s sister.”

Theodore froze. His hand rose to the side of my face and forced me to meet his eyes. “Imogen, that’s impossible. She was killed.”

I shook my head. Held up the book. “It’s in here.”

“How?” His gaze darted, thoughts seemingly frantic. “How are you supposed to kill something that is already dead?”