Page 54 of Fate Unchained
Hazel jumped. “A leshak!” The image wavered, then strengthened again.
Boris turned into a narrow passageway, the street here grubbier and littered with small heaps of trash. Then the image did something unexpected. Part of it blanked out. Boris stood there, his mouth moving as if he were talking to someone, but the part of the image in front of him was just … missing.
Zann pointed. “What’s going on?”
“I see the same thing whenever I look for—” She bit her lip and looked away. “When I scry for Morana.” From what Kyril had pieced together, Hazel was once Morana’s closest partner, but now she hated Morana as much as they did.
“Is that why you have the scrying bowl?” Zann’s tone now was soft.
She nodded. “I know she isn’t dead. I just …” Her face went pale. “I just know.”
“No, she isn’t,” Kyril said. “And Boris may be meeting with her.” He gestured toward the blank part of the image. “How is that happening? And how is he in Coromesto already?”
“She must be using some kind of enchantment to block the ability for anyone to see her.” Hazel still stared at the table. “I’ve tried looking for her in the wee hours at night when I figure she’s asleep and the enchantment isn’t working.” She shook her head. “It’s always in place.”
Finn, unnaturally quiet so far, tilted his head. “There are spells that make you invisible?”
“There are spells that can deflect scrying magic.” She paused a moment. “And there are crystals that can create a small dome of invisibility, but they’re illegal, and they were all supposedly destroyed. However, I wouldn’t put it past Morana to have found one.”
Lilah shifted. “Morana may be in Coromesto right now. We know she’s been living there with the king.”
Hazel’s head jerked up. “Living with a human? Why the deuce would she do that?”
Now it was Lilah’s turn to glower. “Maybe because she has an entire army at her service, as much money as she could ever need, and the magicwielders don’t think it’s a threat.”
Hazel’s mouth opened and closed. She nodded once. “What do we do now?”
Zann stood, his chair skidding across the floor with a shriek. “Now we take a portal to Coromesto and hunt.”
21
She could get used to traveling by portal. It felt like … nothing. Maybe a puff of air, but otherwise, she’d simply taken a step, and one moment she was standing outside a cottage in a sea-swept picturesque village, and the next, they stood at the eastern gate of Coromesto, the city spread before them, Divorky Forest at their back. With the suns glittering overhead, the city appeared washed with white. Horseless carriages, powered by magic, clattered over the cobblestones, and the cries of newspaper hawkers and other street vendors filled the air. She inhaled. The familiar trace of brine from the nearby ocean, mixed with the scents of leather and the faintly metallic odor of the ever-present magic.
Home.
Lilah turned to Hazel. “I’ve never seen anyone use a portal before. Why don’t more magicwielders travel this way? Or offer to move others for a fee?” Magicwielders were never shy about showing off their talents, so why didn’t more of them zip around like this?
Zann answered, “Because very few have the skill.”
Hazel’s brows rose. “I need to use a crystal to do it.” She waved her clenched fist holding the crystal she’d used for both the scrying bowl and the portal. Lilah knew about the types of magicwielders, and Hazel was referring to the fact she was a spellcaster, someone who needed to use a medium to ignite her magic.
“And?” Zann growled. “Not even sorcerers can create portals.”
Two pink spots rose high on Hazel’s cheeks, and she ducked her head, but Lilah thought it was because she was pleased and not because she was angry. The three magicwielder castes were rigid and important to those who lived in Trulo Kingdom. The sorcerers were in the highest caste and supposed to be the most powerful—with spellcasters in the middle caste, and enchanters in the lowest—but as Zann pointed out, Lilah had never seen any of them creating portals like this.
Hazel didn’t look at Zann. “What you said about skill, it’s a good point.”
“Did you just praise me?” Zann asked.
Hazel sniffed, and her cheeks grew pinker. “Sorcerers don’t think other magicwielders could possibly have stronger magic than they do.” She nodded toward Lilah. “It’s what Lilah said, too. Morana is an enchanter, so none of the magicwielders around the king will think she’s worth worrying about, but she is. She definitely is.”
Enchanters were viewed as little more than charlatans, bewitching objects, crafting potions, or helping calm animals. Many of them sold their services to humans, which made the magicwielders in town snub them. But Lilah knew of a few people who were jailed because they’d used love potions on another, and more than one person had died because they’d taken too many age-reducing potions. Enchanters weren’t harmless at all.
A clatter of wheels announced an approaching carriage. “Let’s get away from the gate and make a plan,” Kyril said. “Vulk can’t exactly stroll through the city in daylight.” The five of them hurried into the shadows of the forest.
Lilah asked, “What about the leshak? Where can it hide around here?” Boris had bound her half of the rune to the leshak, and she wanted it back. Was it here with Boris in the city? Baba Yaga hadn’t said anything about what happened when a rune was taken and bound into another formation. What if it put her and Kyril in danger? Or maybe it was simply gone. But it couldn’t be. Half still remained with Kyril.
She moved her hand, brushing it against the grimoire pages stored in her bodice. While the vulk hunted Boris and the leshak, she would read all the pages and see what it said about taking the rune. There must be a way to reverse it.