Marvel's waking thought was that passing out all the time was really beginning to get on his nerves.
But, he conceded as Aisling's concerned face came into view, he might be able to tolerate it depending on what face he saw first.
"You're awake," she said, crossing her arms. She wore her cream-coloured healer's robes, her blonde hair pulled up out of her face. "Good. Now I can yell at you for nearly getting yourself killed again."
Marvel tried to sit up in the comfortable cot, regretting the movement instantly as it made the room tilt madly.
"Don't get up too fast." Aisling placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You just nearly died an hour ago, as I mentioned."
Deciding to lie down for a while before he attempted that again, Marvel took stock of where he was. The room was enormous, more of a grand hall than a room. Several hundred rows of cots similar to the one he lay on were occupied by people in varying states of health, or empty. A few dozen mages dressed similarly to Aisling bustled around, attending to the sick.
Midday sunlight shone through tall, open windows, but the room was cool, the air crisp. On the walls rustled tapestries bearing either the banner of the Draconian Heritage or the emblem of the Academy.
Healer's Section then. Great.
"How did I get here?" he croaked.
"That's your question?" Aisling bit out. "Not, how are you alive after frying your arrays and draining yourself? Marvel, you—"
"Wait," he said quickly. "Before you start the lecture, can I, at least, have some water first?"
Looking furious, Aisling conjured a full glass from the air and passed it to him. Like the saint she was, she waited until he had drained the glass before exploding back into her lecture.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked. "You know you've got no magical centre—" or at least none she could detect, apparently— "so you shouldn't be going around trying to cast athar detection spells anyway! And let's not even get started on the fact that you didn't tell me you were in the Novice class now! And how could you agree to fight a duel against Caspian Griffith?"
Marvel opened his mouth to defend himself.
"I'm not done!" she said, silencing him. "Do you know how worried I was when your teacher brought you in?"
Marvel frowned. His teacher? Apprentice Echo had brought him here?
"She was half-convinced you were going to die too and it would be her fault for letting you challenge someone much stronger and more experienced than yourself! And she was right! If Healer Darcy hadn't been around to fix your arrays, you would have been burned to death from the inside. Do you know how serious that is?"
The rage in her voice ebbed as she went on. By the time she was done, she merely sounded terrified. Marvel swallowed the thick guilt that stuck in his throat at the real fear in her eyes.
Oh, I really scared her, didn't I?
And he hadn't even felt like he was dying.
"I'm sorry," he croaked out, not knowing what else to say. When her face didn't soften, he reached out to squeeze her hand. "I'm really sorry. I didn't know what was happening. If I had, I would have come to you."
"Why should I believe you?" Shaking her head, she tugged her hand out of his grasp. "You disappeared for three days and came stumbling through a portal to Pelen knows where. You freaked out about people who don't exist. You get summoned to the Grandmasters and somehow get into the Novice class."
How on earth had she found out about the Grandmasters?
"And most inexplicable of all," she dropped her voice to a low whisper that rippled like she poured magic into her voice, "you can somehow manage to do a spell without having a centre?"
Damn. Marvel hadn't thought about that. It would look very strange that he'd worked alchemy without a centre, wouldn't it? What if it got out to the Grandmasters?
There was no way they didn't know about it already. How was he still breathing?
"What's going on, Marvel?" she asked, clasping her hands tightly around his. "What's happening to you?"
"I—" He reined himself back. He couldn't tell her. Literally because his head would explode if he tried. But even without the geas, he still wouldn't tell her.
Aisling saw things in strict swathes of black and white. She followed the rules, bent to every doctrine issued by the Conclave, followed every step on a spell without easier shortcuts. Like other mages, she despised warlocks, golems, all forms of Fusion magic really, and was wholly dedicated to the Academy's cause of destroying them.
The only deviation from normal mage culture she allowed was her potioneering.
Knowing her, he doubted she would understand if he told her he'd been resurrected and had no idea what kind of magic had brought him back. She was his best friend, probably the only person in the world who cared about him now. But she might turn him in to the Conclave the second he showed her what his athar looked like. If he told her what the shadows whispered to him any time he got the slightest bit angry.
Marvel thought back to the night that started everything, to her stricken face in the glow of the tavern's hearth when he'd told her— Well, best not to think about that. He'd been sure she would never speak to him again and joined the Quinn's group because staying wasn't worth it without her friendship. It was a miracle she was still here, that she still cared for him. He didn't want to push it.
"It's nothing," he said. "I'm fine."
It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Her face shuttered immediately, locking her thoughts behind a wall.
"Right. You're fine."
"Aisling—"
"Healer Darcy is done with you," she said, turning to walk away. "You're free to go."
"Wait." He caught her wrist before she could get too far. "I—"
Marvel couldn't bear the hope that lit her face as she waited. But there was nothing he could allow himself to say. In the end, she gently slipped from his grasp and left, disappointed.
He'd known Aisling since he came to this stupid place, since he was ten years old with wide eyes and dreams he would eventually discover were far too big for him. All those years, they had taken care of each other. It might kill him to lose her. Especially now, when everything else was seemed dangerous and unfamiliar.
At this rate, he was going to lose her anyway.
Sighing, he chided himself. This was not the time to be worried about friendship. You have more important things to be worrying about anyway. Like surviving the next month, for instance.
Marvel couldn't afford to spend all day lying down. He needed to figure out a plan to defeat Caspian Griffith. To do that he needed to find out how he was going to explain doing magic without a centre and hide the true nature of his power.
To do any of that, he needed the help of a genius.
Well, a genius with access to thousands of scrolls and books on every subject under the sun and beyond it. No other self-proclaimed genius in the Academy had written more books than Master Magus Baylin Pelen. He knew she had amassed plenty of ire from the Conclave with her research into golems and Fusion magic.
There was no better place in the world to search for an answer to his problem.
Pushing himself off the cot, Marvel went to search for his employer.
…
Baylin lived in a library. Said library was impossible to find.
It went wherever her mind went, led along by new ideas the moment they came to her. She was a bit like a child that way, carried away with whatever subject took her fancy from one moment to the next. Even she didn't know where the library was most of the time.
It was always up to Marvel to do his best to tether her to the real world. He was the one who tracked her meals, to ensure she ate between hunting down rare texts or esoteric plant species. He made sure she had a new set of robes and reminded her to change when her robes became more potion ingredients stains than bronze fabric. He made sure she taught classes at least once a month, acted as a courier for the daily missives containing work for her students.
Marvel swept her floors and washed every surface in her library clean. He organised her books and notes, reminded her of contracts she had to perform for her livelihood. He kept records of her earnings and spendings, braving the Grand Markets to buy her ingredients.
It was exactly like raising a child, or maybe caring for an old senile aunt who occasionally experimented on you.
Usually most of his day was spent as her caretaker. That was, before she kicked him out when he tried to get her to sleep, or at least, meditate. Then he would retire not to his bed, but his other pursuits in trying to make a mage of his hopeless self. On average he managed three or four hours of sleep before she summoned him again.
In return for his labour, he got to live at the Academy, despite being entirely useless to everyone else but her. Which was all he'd needed then, really. To leave the Academy would mean admitting defeat. What else would he do with his life?
It was odd she hadn't summoned him since after his meeting with the Grandmasters the night before. Had she been told of the permission granted for him to attend the Novice class and let him be? She had never been considerate of him before. He saw no reason for her to start.
Due to his status as her only servant, Marvel had a few guesses as to where the library currently was. If it was even in the castle, that was. Lately her interests revolved around the influence of planetary alignments on the quality of athar harvested by mages.
He figured she would be in one of the astrology towers and looked in every single one.
She wasn't in any of them.
Panting from climbing a hundred or so staircases in search of his evasive employer, Marvel wanted to give up. He was sorely tempted to try a locating spell, damn the consequences.
The shadows informed him not to attempt anything so foolish lest they made him toss himself out of a window.
"If I die, you die," Marvel reasoned aloud. Still, a chill brushed over his spine at the thought that the shadows could kill him if they pleased.
The shadows conceded the point and admitted that they would keep him alive, and heal him… eventually. Only after drawing out the painful recovery process, of course.
"What is wrong with you?" Marvel snapped, unaware of the stares he drew addressing thin air. "Do you ever think people wouldn't consider you so evil if you just quit threatening them?"
The shadows gave the equivalent of an amused, superior smile. They pitied Marvel for how adorable he was when he was angry.
Marvel decided to ignore the consciousness simmering in the back of his head, waiting for him to snap. Was it normal to be able to communicate with your magic? For it to have thoughts and feelings? To threaten you?
Probably not.
He really needed to find Baylin.
"About to kill yourself climbing another fifty flights of stairs?" Marvel jumped at the sudden appearance of the ghostly avatar of the very woman he had been looking for. "You poor, poor boy. Why don't I summon you to me instead?"
Before he could protest, he found himself in a large library. He really hated the nauseating feeling of being pulled through time and space like a fish on a hook.
With all that had happened, being in Baylin's library had a comforting familiarity to it.
He couldn't tell where exactly in it he was. On either side of him stood rows of shelves filled with heavy tomes that went on for miles as far as his eyes could follow on one end. On the other end was a fireplace with a desk and armchair in front of it. A table teetered beside the chair bearing an impossible amount of books.
Bloody cobwebs hung like curtains between shelves. He could spot the head of what looked like a gryphon poke out from behind a stack of books. A silver-haired figure sat in the armchair, thumbing through an enormous, dusty book.
Baylin.
"Well, boy, what are you waiting for?" she called to him. "Come on."
Stifling a sigh, Marvel headed for the vast fireplace, trying not to stare too long at the green flames that bathed the room in eerie light. He'd walked this path so many times before he didn't even watch his feet.
Something he regretted the very next moment, when he felt the air around him crackle with an activated spell.
He only had time to think, You've got to be kidding me, as a circle of blue light blazed all around him.
And then the hundred thousand blades of kathar began to rain over his head.