“Question is, what do we do now?” Darien said. “Can we use this somehow, to block the demons or figure out how they’re crossing, or something?”
“If the demons have learned to make this kind of portal,” Jasper mused, “then they’d be able to pop out in our world without being summoned. I wonder where the design comes from.”
Silas threaded his fingers into his hair and pulled. “I should know this. I should have the answers.”
“Why?” Darien turned to him. “It’s not your fault your mentor didn’t tell you about the crazy spell in the basement.”
“But I should know. Because…” He stopped, not sure if he really wanted to open up this can of hidden, decaying worms with Darien. But Grim knew, Jasper might guess based on his general knowledge of necromantic apprenticeships, and maybe it was time. “Because sometimes, when a necromancer’s old and dying, and he has a strong young apprentice or student, he transfers knowledge more… intimately than just via teaching methods.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Jasper said, “Coldwell performed a transfer spell with you?”
“Yes.” There was an odd kind of relief in having this last secret out with Darien. “Right before he died.”
“What’s a transfer spell?” Darien’s gaze looked dark and wary, no doubt sensing something from Silas’s tone.
“Not that big a deal,” he lied. “It’s just a technique. When a necromancer is close to death, he or she can move into the Veil and act something like a ghost there.”
“Saying boo? Waving white sheets? What do you mean, like a ghost?”
“Sharing mental space with their student. Passing along a lifetime of knowledge and skills far more efficiently.”
“Efficiently?”
“Mind to mind.” Silas managed not to flinch even slightly at the sense-memory of Coldwell moving into him, of the chill and the totally alien sensation of someone else speaking inside his head. Darien dealt with worse.
Darien stared at him. “He possessed you?”
“Not quite. Not exactly.”
A whole-body shudder wracked Darien. “Jesus. By choice?”
“People let themselves be possessed by demons, for power, by choice,” Silas said acidly, then regretted the comparison. “Anyway, this was nothing like a demon. Not like a ghost either. When you were possessed by your ghosts—”
“They were never mine.”
“By the ghosts, you got small flashes, mostly emotions, maybe images, needs and desires. You didn’t know their names, didn’t learn anything about their professions, their hobbies, their families. They latched on like parasites.”
“You don’t need to remind me.”
“Sorry.” He touched Darien’s arm, feeling muscles rigid as wood under his fingertips. “The necromancer transfer spell is different, very controlled, very cerebral. The dying necromancer keeps as much of the personal and emotional out of the transfer as he can, and instead hands over knowledge, experiences with spells, with demons, the techniques he’s learned, the mistakes he’s made…”
Grim coughed, and Silas frowned at him. “It was really very much like the rest of my apprenticeship, but faster and more intense.” And I’m lying through my teeth. He remembered shaking in his bed a week after the last transfer, days after Coldwell was gone, his head full of things he’d never done, words he’d never said, as strong as if he knew them personally. A long history of magic and experience against the short span of his lived years. Only the purring vibration of his new familiar’s body under his hands had grounded him in his own skin.
Grim said, “Coldwell told Silas to summon a familiar after he was dead. He knew I would help Silas deal with the fallout from that transfer.” Grim added acidly, “He also knew if Silas had called a familiar earlier, I’d have told him not to sacrifice autonomy for power.”
“I had a duty to the world, to humanity and my fellow sorcerers and even to my own abilities, to be as prepared as possible to face demons. By whatever means that required.” Silas had been repeating those words of Coldwell’s in his head for the last ten years. They shouldn’t have rung so hollow now.
“Is that why you sometimes sound like you’re eighty?” Darien asked.
Silas winced. “I don’t think so. The transfer information is buried deep in my head, like a book I can open when I need to, not like a TV running all the time. I think their vocabulary just rubbed off on me.” I hope that’s all it is. His nightmares in the early years afterward had been of Coldwell’s personality, Coldwell’s thoughts, emerging from his mouth. Time, and practice, and a fair bit of anonymous gay oral sex Coldwell would never have condoned, had eased some of those fears.
Darien hugged Silas, his breath whispering across the skin of Silas’s neck. He murmured, “I can’t argue with something that might’ve already saved our lives, but you’re not totally off the hook. Speaking of hiding important stuff.” He let go and stepped back. “Okay. I gather that all the things Coldwell taught you didn’t include this portal.”
“No.” Silas pressed his hands hard against his temples. There was still that tip-of-the-tongue sensation, as if he’d heard or known something relevant, but unlike all the other stuff Coldwell had given him, he couldn’t focus on it, couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The thoughts skittered around, refusing to be pinned down. “And I’m damned unhappy about that.” I gave up the fortress of my mind, trusting that you’d tell me what I needed to survive. This is a pretty big secret to hide right under my feet, old man.
He clenched his teeth and pulled in short breaths. Damn you, you could’ve left me a letter, a key, a will with something more than “all I die possessed of” in it. But complaining to dead men wasn’t going to get them anywhere, and neither would throwing bricks at Coldwell’s runes, however satisfying that sounded right now. He lowered his hands, straightened his back, and ignored the tempting fragments scattered around his feet. “Jasper? Any thoughts?”
Jasper walked back and forth, studying the rune structure. “I could maybe recreate it, given time, with the example right in front of me, although some of the runes are totally unfamiliar. The math is intriguing, but it all makes sense. Not sure I can power it, though. I’m not sure even Darien could. And I don’t know what value one more portal would have in our current situation.”
“Maybe we could go home,” Pip suggested. “To my world. And ask Professor Xsing?”
“Out of the mouths of puppies,” Grim said. “Xsing would be the person in all the worlds I’d want to contact. But making another identical portal to the grass world is one thing. Making one to safely go somewhere else, like our home, strikes me as an order of magnitude more difficult.”
Jasper nodded slowly. “Those are the goal runes there.” He pointed at a spot over his head.
Darien squinted. “It just says new and safe and world. Stuff like that. A couple I don’t recognize.”
“No specific goal, perhaps,” Silas suggested. “Just adventuring.” That sounded exactly like Norlington, whose curiosity was always bigger than any one lifetime could hold. Like this house full of more books than any one man could read.