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As they wound their way through the streets of Luminara, Hali cast her spell indeed, weaving a tale of brave knights and clever sorceresses, of mysteries unlocked and treasures found. She spoke of a childhood spent in the company of books, of her parents’ untimely passing, and the uncle who had raised her, the one who had fostered her love of stories and strange, wondrous things.
“You see, he was always off on some grand adventure of his own, scouring the realms for rare tomes and curious artifacts. He’d be gone for months, sometimes years, but he always came back, his pack full to bursting, and his eyes alight with the thrill of discovery.”
“And you would sit at his feet, and hang on his every word, I suppose?” Osric asked, his gaze soft.
Hali shrugged. “I’d like to say I did. But the truth is, I was a stubborn thing, even then. I was so caught up in my own stories, the ones I dreamed up in my head, that I didn’t always take the time to listen to his. I thought, foolishly, that I already knew everything there was to know.”
They had reached the edge of the University district, the spires of the grand buildings rising in the distance. Hali had spent a miserable semester there as a student, and while departing had been the right choice for her, the memories were still a raw, tender wound. But when she glanced over at Osric, he was watching her, his expression open, and it struck her, not for the first time, how easy it was to talk to him, how safe she felt in his presence.
“Take, for example, the time he found the lost library of King Thraedon the Terrible. It was buried deep in the deserts of the Glass Wastes, or so the story went. He’d heard a rumor, you see, from a trader in a tavern, and he set off at once to investigate. He spent months crossing the burning sands, braving sandstorms and scorpions and worse, only to find that the library had long since been plundered.”
Hali sighed, the sound wistful. “But he didn’t let that stop him. He spent the better part of a year tracking down the thieves, and recovering the tomes, and in the end, he managed to bring back a few precious volumes. Not the legendary cache he’d been hoping for, but enough to make it worth his while.”
“And the moral of the story is?” Osric asked, his lips twitching.
Hali laughed. “The moral is, sometimes the true adventure is not in the finding, but in the seeking. Or at least, that’s what I like to tell myself. I think he was just happy to have an excuse to spend a year in a tavern, regaling the patrons with his tales.”
“Your uncle sounds like he’s quite the fellow.”
“Indeed. Uncle Lysander—he’s my father’s brother—says he got all the sense for both of them, but I think he’s got more than a little adventurous spirit in himself, too. Don’t reckon he wanted to be saddled with a weird child like me, but . . .” Her voice dropped. “Well, I’m grateful he took me in all the same.”
“We don’t always choose our calling, but we make the most of it,” Osric said.
Hali smiled brighter at that. “Indeed. But what of your family?”
“My parents . . .” Osric’s voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder, and Hali instinctively leaned in to hear it. “They were both smiths, like me, but they worked in different forges. I used to spend my days with my father, hammering out weapons and armor for the clan. But it was my mother who first saw the fire in me, and who taught me how to shape it.”
He fell silent for a moment, and Hali felt an almost painful tug at her heart. She wanted to reach out, to take his hand, to offer him whatever comfort she could. But she sensed that this was a story he needed to tell, in his own way.
“She used to take me up into the mountains, to a secluded grove where the lava flowed close to the surface. There, she said, we could commune with the power of the primordials, and draw on their strength. But for me, it was more like trying to harness a runaway river, or a storm that raged on the horizon. I had the power, but I didn’t know how to control it.”
Osric’s eyes met Hali’s, and she saw in them a raw, aching loneliness, a yearning for something he couldn’t name. She squeezed his hand, and after a moment, he continued.
“I was still just a child, barely old enough to undergo the Rite of Embers, but already I was a disappointment to my clan. A failure, they called me, and I was all too eager to prove them wrong. So I practiced, day and night, until my hands were raw and blistered, and still the fire eluded me.”
Hali wanted to ask how he finally learned to wield it, but they had reached the gates of the University, and the sight of the soaring spires and ancient stone arches never failed to fill Hali with a sense of wonder, of endless possibility. She led Osric up the winding path to Professor Thornsley’s office, and as they drew closer, a tiny figure came scurrying out to meet them.
“Miss Brightminer! There you are. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”
Hali beamed, and gave the gnome a warm hug. “Never, Professor. I told you, I had a few matters to attend to first.”
Professor Thornsley, an antiquities scholar, was a tiny, round-shouldered figure, with a cloud of white hair that perpetually drifted after him like punctuation, and ink-stained fingers that never quite came clean. He was one of the most brilliant scholars Hali had ever known, but his mind tended to race ahead of him, and he often forgot to engage his filter before he spoke, which had led to many heated arguments between him and Hali’s uncle over their long friendship. Hali had a soft spot for him, though, and she suspected that he played up his absent-mindedness to lull others into underestimating him.
“Ah, yes, yes, matters, of course. Well, never mind that. What have you brought me today?”
Hali led him over to a nearby bench, where Osric had already set down his pack. “We found this in the archives, and I was hoping you might be able to help us with the translation.”
As Professor Thornsley opened the book, his eyes widened. “My stars. This is . . . most intriguing. Wherever did you find it?”
“In the old royal archives, up in the mountains,” Hali said. “It’s a cipher we’ve never seen before, but we think it might be related to the language of the first peoples to worship the primordials.”
“Hmmm. It could be. Or it could be their challengers—the Obsidian Circle.” The professor’s hands shook as he turned the pages, and Hali felt a thrill of excitement run through her. She hadn’t read much, but she knew that the Obsidian Circle was a secretive cult that had flourished centuries ago, worshipping the primordials and harnessing their power for their own dark ends. Very little was known about them, but what scraps of information had survived hinted at unspeakable rituals and terrible deeds.
“Dark forces, dark forces indeed,” Professor Thornsley muttered. “Ancient evils, waiting to be unleashed. You must be very careful, my dear. There are some things that are better left buried in the past.”
Hali’s imagination was already racing, spinning out wild theories and conspiracies, but she forced herself to focus. “Can you help us with the translation, Professor?”
He blinked, and the absent-minded scholar was gone, replaced by the brilliant mind that lay beneath. “Yes, yes, of course. Let me see what I can do.”
