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“Fascinating,” he whispered. He rubbed his chin and looked at me curiously. “Kya, how many other connections do you feel? Besides the ones to Odarum and Ryker, how many magical ones?”
I had so many questions, he wasn’t supposed to know about the bond to Odarum, or even his name. But I answered his question first.
“Like the orbs? I don’t know. A few. I haven’t counted them. There’s the one that gives me invisibility from Kleio, but the others are faint and I haven’t tried to hone them yet.”
“But there are more than two?” He pressed.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. Deres and Ryker looked at each other. “What? What does that mean?”
Ryker ran a hand down his face. “It means,” he breathed in disbelief. “That you have more than one magical ability gifted to you from Kleio. You only receive one from your Spirit.”
“They can do that? The Gods can give more than one gift? What about that balance? Has that ever happened before?” I asked, incredulous.
“They can. And they have before, just not in a very, very long time. They usually only grant the ability or abilities that you would require in order to fulfill their purpose for you.” Deres spoke knowingly. His confidence made me believe him. “What was the task that Kleio gave you? Her exact words.”
I took a deep breath. “She said I was to serve her Nation.” My eyes went distant as I thought back to my conversation with the Goddess. “That the Glaev is not as it seems. And her command for me to restore the balance, I asked her how, and she told me to listen. That I would learn, and to seek the truth. When I asked how to find it, she said that I already knew.” I shrugged my shoulders.
I didn’t already know. I had no idea what I was doing.
“Which brings us to why we’re here in the first place,” Ryker added. “Kya has some questions about the book you told me to find.”
A rueful smile crossed Deres’s lips. “You were successful.” Not a question, but a statement.
He gestured for us to follow him through one of the doors and we all sat in a small sitting area. Ryker and I sat with each other on a settee, our knees touching. Deres took the seat across from us.
“What did you want to ask?”
“What is the book?” I leaned forward.
“The book is ancient, a tome written in a language not of this realm, and rumored to have shown up just after Odes’s death thousands of years ago. It is said that the book is about dark magic and perhaps its origin.”
“But what is dark magic? Eamon mentioned it before but no one seems to know what it actually is.” I glanced at Ryker.He shook his head, not knowing either, and looked at Deres skeptically.
“Magic is energy. And, as I’m sure you know, having lived among Scholars, that energy has equal opposites in order to balance each other out. Light and dark. Day and night. Good and bad.”
“Like the Spirits,” Ryker offered.
I listened intently as Deres continued.
“Yes, exactly. The two are not so different, as you might think. It is why the Spirits intervened with the Gods in the first place. There was such an imbalance after Odes fell, that the world tore itself apart, threatening ultimate destruction. Such as it is again, now.”
“Wait,” I interrupted.
Is not what it seems.
The memory of Kleios voice rang through my head.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said slowly. “That the Glaev is thisdark magic? Magic not of this realm?”
Deres shook his head with a shrug. “I don’t know for certain. I only know that it is disrupting the balance. I can feel it every time it grows. Every time it kills a little more of our world, threatening to destroy the realm. And I know that the book I told you to find might have something to do with it.”
“It definitely will. Have you heard of Rolim Fawarin?” I smiled when Ryker gasped in understanding.
“An old friend. I was the one to originally tell him of the dark book that led him to his theory about the Glaev. But he died before he could complete his theory and his work was lost to time. Until it wasn’t.” Deres gave a sad smile.
“Do you understand its language? Obviously Rolim did.” Ryker asked. He reached over and laced my fingers through his.
“No. I never learned, and I’m not sure that Rolim did entirely either.”
