Some kids conserve memories of their late parents, a shade of a vocalist, a hint of a scent, a portrait. I recollected nothing of her as if she had never lived.
My father held no photographs of her—it must have been extremely painful for him—and I learned just what he confided to me.
She was beautiful, he had asserted, and she had long blond hair. I gaped at the woman in the
portrait. She was short and elegant. Her features fitted her physique, well-formed, and delicate, but devoid of fragility.
She strutted guaranteed, with susceptible, natural composure, dressed in a sort of metaphysical charm and flawlessly conscious of capability. She was gorgeous.
Both he and Greg informed me I resembled her, but no matter how hard I surveyed her portrait, I could discern no resemblance. My traits were bolder.
My maw was huger and not scowling by any span of the intuition. I did manage to inherit her eye colour, dark brown, but my eyes had a unique cut, almond-shaped, narrowly extended.
And my membrane was a hue darker. If I overfilled on eyeliner and mascara, I could handily pass for a gipsy.
There was more to it than that—my mother's countenance had feminine gentleness. Mine didn't, at least not when correlated to hers. If we were to strut side by side in a compartment ample of people, I wouldn't earn a single glimpse. And if somebody had halted to chat me up, she could've snatched him with a single smile.
Pretty… Yeah. Fine understatement, Dad.
On the other hand, if the same people had to pick one of us to shove a terrible dude in the kneecap, I'd earn the vote, no problem.
Next to my mother and father, Greg was strutted by a gorgeous Asian woman. Anna. His first wife.
Unlike my parents, those two strutted slight apart, each retaining a scarcely noticeable distance as if their individualities would whack a spark if they attained for one another. Greg's sights were grievous.
I plopped the portrait front down on the desk.
The other picture was of me, about nine or ten years old, diving into a lake from the branches of a giant poplar. I didn't realize he had it or even when it was taken.
I read the letter, a few scant lines on the white chunk of a sheet, a portion of Spenser's poem.
"One day I inscribed her name upon the bristle, But arrived the surges and scrubbed it away:
Again I inscribed it with a second-hand,
But appeared the tide, and made my pains his prey." Below four words were inscribed in Greg's blood.
Amehe Tervan Senehe Ud
The words streaked with red fire. A potent twinge clenched me. My lungs cramped, the compartment blurred, and through the dense dim the pulsation of my heart creaked loud like the toll of a church buzzer.
A twist of forces churned around me, snatching me in a crooked mess of slippery, elastic power currents. I lunged out, and clasped them, and they hauled me forth, distant into the amalgam of light and sound.
The light penetrated me and spurt within my mind, sending a myriad of sparks through my membrane. The blood in my veins luminesced like molten metal.
Lost. Stray in the whirlwind of glint.
My maw opened, striving to divulge a word. It wouldn't appear and I thought I would perish, and then I mumbled it, spilling my strength into the fragile pitch.
"He said." Mine.
The world ceased whirling and I found my niche in it. The four words loomed before me. I had to assert them. I clenched my power and mumbled the words, willing them, compelling them to become mine.
"Amehe. Tervan. Senehe. Ud."
The flow of power ebbed. I was gazing at the white chunk of paper. The words were gone and a minor puddle of crimson dissipated across the sheet. I brushed it and felt the prickling of magic. My blood. My nose was bleeding.
Yanking a dressing from my pouch, where I often hauled some, I mashed it against my nose and crouched back. I'd simmer the plasters later.
The watch on my wrist said 12:17 p.m. Somehow within those few twinklings I had relinquished nearly an hour and a half.
The four words of power. Obey, Kill, Protect, and Die. Words so rudimentary, so hazardous, so vital that they commanded the raw jinx itself.
Nobody realized how many of them there were, where they came from, or why they clasped such tremendous hold over magic.
Even people who had never utilized magic comprehended their meaning and were subject to their ability as if the words were a portion of some chronological ethical memory we all held.
It wasn't sufficient to simply recognize them; one had to acquire them. When it goes to amassing power words, there were no second chances.
You either vanquished them or you perished striving, which illustrated why so few among the magic workers could manipulate them. Once you made them yours, they belonged to you forever.
They had to be utilized with incredible exactness and employing them seized a piece of power that vacated the caster near weariness.
Greg and my father both cautioned me that the power words could be resisted, but so far I hadn't had an opportunity to utilize them against an opponent that did. They were the last resort when all else failed.
Now I had six words. Four were offered to me by Greg and two others: Mine and Release. My father tutored them to me long ago.
I was twelve and I nearly died making them mine. This time it had been too susceptible.
Perhaps the power of the blood thrived with age. I wished Greg was alive so I could inquire about him.
I darted to the floor. The orange lines of Greg's ward had thrived so dimly, I could barely glimpse them. They had assimilated everything they could.
The words blurted in my head, shifting and tossing, striving to learn their place. Greg's previous gift. More valuable than anything he could have bestowed me.