"There you are. I wondered if you were going to show before noon." I smiled at Clare as she bustled into the office, a fresh bouquet of mixed flowers in her hand.
"Of course I'm here! Where did you think I'd be?" She plucked out the remains of yesterday's mostly eaten bouquet and took the vase down the hall to the bathroom for fresh water.
"Well, given that you and Finn were at it all night, I'm surprised you're here at all," I said when she returned.
"Hmph," she snorted, plopping the fresh flowers in the vase. "You're just jealous because your boyfriend left you and mine didn't."
"I don't have a boyfriend. Paen is not a boyfriend. He is a client. I admit we have a personal situation going on, but it's nothing permanent."
"So you say. What have you been doing this morning, Miss Productive?"
I tossed a folder onto her desk, stretched, and looked out the window at a rare sunny May day.
"Quite a bit, actually. I ran out to Mr. Race's house first thing this morning to see what it knew about his manuscript, but came up empty there."
"Was it like Finn's castle?" she asked, leafing through the pages of the report I'd typed up and printed.
"No, the house remembered a manuscript, but the memory was fuzzy, as if it was from a long time ago. The housekeeper let me look around, but there wasn't anything else to pick up. I did get the name of the appraisers who worked on Mr. Race's collection a few years ago. I was just about to drop by their offices and see if I couldn't wheedle a peek at their report on the manuscript, but if you don't have other plans, perhaps you could do that while I go talk to the local expert on mages."
"Mages?" Clare's nose wrinkled as I scooped up my purse and jacket. "Why on earth do you want to talk to someone about mages?"
"Read the second report. While you've been romping away half the morning in bed with Finn, I found a morsel of information about the Jilin God statue. Turns out it's older than I thought - and has mystical origins. There are not a lot of details about it available - "
"You can say that again," Clare interrupted. "I've researched that thing for three days now without finding so much as a solid description of it."
" - but I did find an obscure reference to a mage who supposedly possessed it before it disappeared. It's not a big lead, but other than scrying, it's the only avenue I have to pursue right now."
Her eyes got huge. "You're not going to scry, are you?"
"Stop looking so frightened. I told you I had it under control," I reassured her. "But just to make you rest easier, I'm going to have Jake with me when I try it. Just in case."
"Oh, Sam, I wish you wouldn't - "
I let her work it out of her system (there's nothing quite as pathetic as a frustrated faery), but in the end, did what I had intended to do all along. I did admit there was some validity to her concerns, however, and swore to be careful and to not scry without a spotter. "Jake'll be there for me," I told her as I was leaving.
"I just hope that's enough," she said darkly.
I hurried down the stairs and out onto the street, stopping when Clare leaned out the window to bellow at me, "What about the statue? I thought we were going to look at it?"
"Later!" I waved frantically at her to hush up, glancing up and down the busy street. No one seemed to pay us any attention, but who knew what interested ears might have caught that?
The mage expert lived on Cockburn Street, in a very chic area full of cafes, exclusive shops, and snooty galleries. The apartments, like the other businesses, were housed in a connected line of grey stone, steep-gabled Victorian buildings. I located the correct apartment, pressed the appropriate buzzer, and gave my name. "Hi, I'm Samantha Cosse. I called earlier."
"Ah, Miss Cosse, yes, of course I remember you." The disembodied voice of a man came out with the tinny quality so peculiar to intercoms. "Please come up."
I glanced at the sign reading Caspar Green and noted the apartment number, opening the door when it buzzed at me. Two minutes later I found myself in a sunny peach and cream sitting room, enjoying a brief burst of sunlight while sipping a cup of India tea and nibbling on a tart lemon cookie.
It was perfectly normal-looking, peaceful even, except for one thing - my elf warning system was going off like mad. Something was not right in this room. Something was definitely not right.
"How can I assist you?" Caspar asked, holding out his hands in a gesture of generosity.
I rubbed my arms, trying to quell the goose bumps that marched up and down my flesh. "Er... this is going to sound very rude, and I apologize in advance for that, but you don't happen to have anything demonic around, do you?"
"Demonic?" he asked, looking startled.
"Yes. Something that a demon has touched, maybe?" I suggested, looking around the flat. Nothing looked out of place - the sitting room was flooded with sunlight, the peach walls catching the light and turning it warm and soothing. Regardless of that, I felt chilled, as if the air was refrigerated. "Perhaps something that's been charged with a dark power?"
Caspar looked around as well. "I am a bit taken aback by that question. I have no demonic object, nor any object that has powers, dark or light."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you," I said hurriedly. "It's just that something is pinging my Otherworld radar."
His face, unremarkable except for a pair of extremely bushy black eyebrows, mirrored surprise. "Your Otherworld radar?"
"That's what I call it," I said, smiling and trying to analyze the feeling that something was wrong. "But I have to admit that sometimes it's a bit off."
"Indeed," he said politely, offering me the plate of cookies again. "How is it I can be of help to you?"
"I understand you have an academic interest in the history of mages," I said, hastily swallowing a mouthful of cookie. Nothing makes quite such a dashing impression as spewing cookie crumbs all over the place. "I'm interested in the man who may be connected with a manuscript called the Simla Gestor Coda. Have you ever heard of him or it?"
Caspar sat back in a peach-colored chair, his brow furrowed and fingers steepled as he thought. "The Simia Gestor Coda. Hmm. The name is somewhat familiar, but not something I remember much... ah. Wait. I have it. The Coda concerns the origins of several races - Dark Ones, Fomh¨®ire, and Ilargi are what I remember, but there may be more in the manuscript."
I licked lemony powdered sugar off my lips as I pulled out my PDA, relieved that my long shot had turned out so well. "Fomh¨®ire I've heard of - they are the Celtic branch of faeries, yes? But I don't think I've ever heard mention of Ilargi."
Caspar waved an elegant hand at the plate of cookies. I shook my head, taking notes on my PDA as he spoke. "I believe the Fomh¨®ire would be very surprised to find themselves called faeries, but that is neither here nor there. The Ilargi have Basque origins. They are reapers, of the moon clan."
"Oh," I said, a little chill going down my spine. Reapers I'd heard of from my Diviner studies - they are beings that light the way of the dead. Not someone you want to hang around. "Do you happen to know who wrote the Coda? Thus far I haven't been able to find out any information regarding its author, or more than a vague skeleton of its history. I know it was connected with Marco Polo somehow, and it disappeared approximately three centuries ago, but that's about it."
"I wish I could help you, but alas" - Caspar spread his hands again, showing me they were empty - "I know little more about it than you. I do not know who authored it, although I have heard the name of Samaria Magnus mentioned in connection with the Coda."
"Samaria Magnus?" I asked, making a note of that name for further research. "A woman?"
"No, it was a false name, one taken to protect the identity of the individual from charges of heresy. No doubt his origins were in Samaria. Magnus was a common surname adopted by mages over the centuries."
"Ah. That makes sense. So this Samaria Magnus wrote a manuscript about the origins of a bunch of different people, and then... what?"
"No one knows. Both Magnus and the Coda disappeared for several hundreds of years. The latter made an appearance in the late seventeenth century, when it was the cause of much infighting between the mages of the time. But it, too, slipped from view. Few know it ever existed, let alone know much about it. I'm afraid that is the extent of my knowledge about both the Coda and Samaria Magnus."
"Well, I appreciate both," I said, tucking away my PDA and taking a sip of tea before setting the delicate china teacup on the table next to me. "There's not a lot to be found about it, but this should give me a little more to go on. Thank you so much for your time."
"It is my pleasure," Caspar said, escorting me to the door. "If I can assist you any further with mages, thirteenth century or otherwise, I am at your disposal."
He made me an elegant bow, his smile lingering in my mind as I tromped down the stairs to the street, aware by the prickling of my back that something wasn't as it should be. It wasn't until I was on the bus, halfway to Diviners' House, that something occurred to me - at no point during our conversation did Caspar Green express the slightest bit of curiosity as to my interest in Samaria Magnus or the Coda.
"What do you think that means?" I asked Jake a good forty minutes later, as we were on another bus, this one headed for Butterfly World, an insect zoo of sorts.
Jake looked pensive - not an unnatural state for a Diviner, but a stranger to his usually sunny countenance. "I'm not sure. It could be that he has no interest in the Coda or this mage, despite his academic studies."
"Or it could be something he's not telling me," I said. "My elf warning system was into the red zone while I was in his apartment."
"Your elf warning system is notoriously unreliable," he answered, giving me a look.
"It's not unreliable. Just a bit... touchy."
"Touchy? Like the time you swore your room was haunted, and you conducted nightly s¨¦ances to try to contact the haunting spirit?"
I looked out the window and tried my best to ignore him.
"You had everyone up for three nights in a row, convinced that your room contained a poor, lost spirit who was stuck in this dimension, unable to get to the next, isn't that right?"
It's amazing how hard it is to ignore someone sitting right next to you.
"You even demanded that Brother Immanuel conduct a ritual of purification in your room, in an attempt to help the spirit on its way."
I gritted my teeth.
"And what was it that turned out to be inhabiting your room?" Jake asked, laughter rife in his voice.
I turned around just enough to glare at him. "You know full well it was a mouse, so stop smirking. I never said my elf sense was very highly attuned. I just said it's there, and it warns me about things."
"Not always Otherworld things, though," Jake pointed out gently.
I let that go, partly because he was doing me a favor in agreeing to monitor me while I scryed, but mostly because he was right.
"Tell me again why we're doing this at Butterfly World?" Jake asked as I paid our entrance fee (Diviners take a vow of poverty not to purify their souls, but to keep them from being tempted to divine locations of material goods that could make them impossibly wealthy). He looked with interest at the brochure that was given to us with our admittance tickets. "Will we have time to see the poison arrow frogs and the royal python?"
"If you're good, yes. And we're here because this is the sunniest, warmest place in Edinburgh, thanks to their industrial-strength sunlamps. I think the jungle area is going to be our best bet," I said, consulting the giant map posted at the entrance. "Hopefully we can find a quiet, out-of-the-way corner where no one will bother us."
Jake followed docilely as we entered what looked like a huge, outsized greenhouse, happily perusing the informational pamphlet. "Did you know that the life span of your average butterfly is only a fortnight? There is one type, a zebra butterfly, that can live ten months, though."
"Fascinating." I paused for a moment to get my bearings, a little thrown by the mass of color flitting around. There must have been two or three hundred different types of butterflies - some brightly colored, others in camouflage, and all of them swooping around in a never-ending palette of color. The air was thick and humid, heavy with the scent of damp earth and sickly sweet flowers. I started sweating almost immediately. "Look, behind that clump of palmish whatever, next to the big machine. That looks like no one goes there."
"Probably because it's off the pathway," Jake remarked as I leaped over the low barrier intended to keep people out of the tropical foliage.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to do any damage. I just want a little privacy."
Luckily the group of kids in school uniforms that had arrived before us sucked up the attention of the Butterfly World attendants, leaving us able to slip behind a dense clump of palms in a corner of the building. I pulled a lap blanket out of my backpack and spread it out on the moist earth, glancing up for a moment at a sunlamp that beamed its rays down on us. It wouldn't have done as a substitute on its own, but since it was sunny outside, the combination of artificial and real sunlight was enough to power my elf cells.
"Right. If you'll sit there... mind the butterfly... I'll sit across from you, and I think we should both be hidden from view by anyone on the path." I gestured to a spot. Jake obediently sat down cross-legged on the blanket, looking expectant.
I settled myself in a pool of sunlight, pulling a soft leather bag from the backpack, carefully removing from it both my black mirror bowl and a small flask of water. I held the bowl up so it shared the sunlight with me, closing my eyes as I allowed the sun to soak into my being, merging with my essence, becoming something new, a bright, shining light of everything that I was. Concentrating fiercely, I poured the light into the black abyss of the waiting receptacle.
What in god's name are you doing? a startled, somewhat panicked voice asked.
Paen?
What are you doing to me? Stop it! Stop filling me with that blasted light!
I'm not filling you with light. I'm charging a scrying bowl.
You may think that's what you're doing, but you're damn near blinding me.
Don't be ridiculous. How can charging a bowl spill over onto... hey! You're talking to me!
There was a long pause before Paen sighed resignedly into my head. Where are you?
Butterfly World. Why?
I'll be there as quickly as I can.
You're welcome to watch, of course, but there's no need for you to be here. I've brought my Diviner friend Jake along to keep me from sucking all the tourists into another dimension.
Paen sighed again.
That was a joke. Seriously, there's no need -
I'll be there. Don't scry without me.
Paen's presence withdrew from my mind, leaving me with the feeling of loss. "Well, crap."
"Eh?" Jake asked, still looking expectantly at me.
"One of my clients wants to watch the scrying," I said, setting the bowl on my lap.
"Why didn't you say that before you dragged me in here?" Jake got to his feet. "How long will this client be? Will I have time to take in the scorpions?"
"I don't know where he is. Hang on, I'll ask." I reached out with my mind, holding an image of Paen, bringing up all the confused morass of feelings I had about him. Where are you?
On the way. I should be there in about ten minutes.
"Go look at the scorpions," I told Jake. "Come back in about fifteen minutes."
"Erm... Sam? I didn't see a mobile phone there." Jake looked a bit perplexed.
"Oh... well... this client just happens to be telepathic," I said, trying to avoid specifics.
"Righto." He toddled off without any further questions. That's one of the things I liked about Jake - he didn't sweat the little stuff.
I debated just going ahead and doing the scrying without waiting as ordered by Paen - after all, I am a take-charge sort of person, and he was paying me to do a job - but in the end I justified a wait as something that would be courteous and professional. Not to mention the good five minutes I spent flat on my belly hiding from the group of Scottish horticulturists who were grouped just on the other side of the clump of palms that screened me from the walkway, examining the leaves with a closeness that almost led to my discovery.
Where are you?
Butterfly house, off to the left of the entrance, north corner, hidden behind a sturdy clump of palms.
Could you have chosen a brighter spot? I don't think this sunlight is quite enough to fry me to a crisp.
I didn't know you were coming to the party. There's a shady spot just behind me, covered by an energy curtain and hidden behind a big misting pump, if you want to risk that. I have to stay in the sun. It powers me.
The palms in front of me rustled as a black shadow streaked into the corner made dark by an overhead curtain, and a lurking machine that churga-churgaed away quietly to itself.
What are you doing?
I smiled at the peevish note in Paen's voice. Poor man, all this sunlight had to be uncomfortable for him.
Listening to the butterflies argue.
A meaningful pause filled my head. Butterflies argue?
Oh yeah. They're really actually quite cantankerous for such pretty things. Always getting into fights with each other.
I see. Is this an elf trait, or have you just lost your wits?
I gave him a mental eye roll. Look, I don't pick on you because of the way you were born, OK? So don't give me any grief about being able to understand butterfly. And while we're on the subject of different - what made you change your mind about doing the mental thing with me?
A sigh emerged from over my shoulder, in the vicinity of the misting machine. I smiled straight ahead at a couple of startlingly blue mortho butterflies that were flitting around taunting each other.
"Are you going to try scrying now?"
"As soon as Jake gets back from looking at creepy-crawlies. Are you going to avoid answering my question?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I don't wish to answer it. How long will the scrying take?"
"Probably not too long. Why are you so adamant about avoiding the fact that we can mind-talk?"
"Why are you so desirous of doing it?"
I shrugged, still watching the butterflies as one took offense to a slur and attacked the other. "I've never had this ability with anyone. It's pretty unique. I just don't understand why you're so freaked about it - oh, hi, Jake."
"Don't tell me, you're talking to the butterflies?"
"No, to my client, Paen Scott. Paen, this is Brother Jacob, one of the Diviners who used to teach me."
Jake glanced around quickly, giving me a worried look. "Erm... Sam..."
"He's behind the machinery," I said, waving at the big misting machine. "He's a Dark One. Sunshine is a no-no."
"Ah," Jake said, squinting at the machine. "Pleasure."
"Likewise," came Paen's voice from behind the machine. "Can we get on with this? I have a tip I'd like to discuss with you, Samantha."
"Tip? What tip? About your statue?"
Paen said nothing.
"Fine, be mysterious." I sighed, picking up the black mirrored bowl in one hand, the flask of spring-water in the other. "Hopefully this won't take very long."
Scrying isn't my forte. I came to that conclusion some ten minutes later, when I was trying to decipher the images that flashed in my mind while covered with hundreds and hundreds of squabbling butterflies. An image of the gold bird statue popped into my head for a moment. Clearly I had statues on the brain. I closed it out and focused my thoughts on the monkey statue before looking into the bowl.
"What exactly do you see?" Jake asked, batting at a couple of butterflies that left me to investigate him.
"I see the statue," I hissed through my teeth, experience having proven that opening your mouth to speak while covered in butterflies is not a good idea. "It's a black monkey all right. Smallish, kind of ugly. Has a really big... er... masculine attribute. Looks Pagan rather than Chinese."
"Where is it?" Paen asked from the cover of the misting machine.
I shook my head to dislodge a couple of the butterflies that clung to my eyelashes, and looked deep into the reflective water held in my scrying bowl. It was a bit difficult to scry because the butterflies, evidently attracted to me while I was doing my sun elf thing, were flitting around in front of the bowl, but I managed to see past them, past the surface of the water, deep into that twilight place between realities also known as the beyond.
"It's in a dark place. Closely confined in some sort of sarcophagus or something like that. Maybe a tomb," I said, sending the mental picture of it to Paen. "There's a definite feel of it being held in a confined, protected place."
"A tomb? What tomb?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No idea. I can't see its location beyond the fact that it's entombed. All I see is the statue itself."
"Er... Sam? I hate to hurry you, but I think you should try to wrap this up," Jake said, his voice worried.
"Why?" I asked, my vision still turned inward, trying to pull out of the tomb to see where it was located.
"Because you're starting to emit light, and there's a lorry-load of butterflies heading this way that look like they aren't going to be content with just fluttering merrily around you."
I pulled back out of the scrying vision and glanced down first at myself, where tiny little pinpoints of sunlight were bursting out of me. "Wow. I'm in sunshine overload... holy moly!"
Heading toward us in a veritable tidal wave of brilliant color, every butterfly in the whole of Butterfly World was zooming straight at me in one solid mass that knocked down everything and everyone in its path. People screamed and threw themselves to the floor as the swarm flew at us. As if that sight wasn't frightening enough, the butterflies' chant of "Drink the light! Drink the light!" turned my blood cold.
I dumped the water out of my scrying bowl and leaped to my feet, snatching up my backpack before throwing myself through the palms, butterflies falling off me as I bolted for the door. "Run! Run for your lives! Killer butterflies!"