Geezer made a variety of noises as he tipped his head this way and that. He stood and hovered over it, made a great effort to bend down and peer upward, and just as he was trying to stick his head between her outstretched arms to assess the other side, she offered it up for him to hold.
“Oh, that is easier,” he mumbled, taking the urn and peering beneath the lid, then doing a more thorough inspection all over. “This,” he finally said, cross-eyed as he looked up at her, “is anapotrope.”
Celeste blinked. She had heard the word before, but it had been a very long time. “You mean it’s a…a ward?”
“In a way. You see, this ceramic is crafted from clay sourced in the Everdarque, hardened in a kiln warmed by brimstone, and it’s been blessed many times over by divine magic. It’s extraordinarily powerful and rare, and while it does indeed ward against evil, rather than keeping something out, it keeps it in.”
And I opened the damn thing up. Celeste scooted to the edge of her seat. “You can tell all that by touching it?”
“Yes,” he said gravely then flipped it over. “And also from this little writing on the bottom here.” Script had been carved around its base so fancifully it simply looked like decoration.
“I guess I should have looked closer.”
“It also says you can wash it with abrasive soaps, and it won’t lose its color, so there’s that.” Geezer flipped the jar back over, holding the lid in one hand and the vessel in the other. “Apotropes require a large expenditure of power to be created because they’re meant to contain beings that absorb arcana. I’ve seen a few in my day, or IthinkI have, but this one’s really something. Seems like it was meant to hold a great evil.” His eyes narrowed on her. “Are youabsolutelysure we didn’t have an appointment? One we might have set up, say, three or four years ago?”
Celeste blinked, thrown, then tried nodding and shaking her head at the same time. “No, no we’ve never spoken or met or anything.”
“Hmm, well, all right.” He weighed the two pieces of the jar in his hands then glanced upward, and Celeste followed his gaze along crammed bookshelves that scaled the walls. “I bet I have writings about apotropes and the things they’re meant to hold somewhere. Maybe not in here though, this library only goes throughalchemy.”
“So, the thing that was in this—if there was a thing—I could use this jar to trap it again?”
“Well, are you a priestess?”
Celeste shook her head.
“This apotrope works with divine arcana. It’s even got some Ouranic written here…” He pulled a scroll of parchment and a reed from an inner pocket of his robe and copied it out. Celeste would never be able to translate it herself, she’d always been terrible at the language of the infernal let alone that of the divine. “That’ll take some time for me to puzzle out, but it seems this was crafted for a specific entity that someone really wanted locked away. Knowing its name would help, and the kind of thing it is, but if you want to utilize the apotrope, a strong, holy source would be best to wield it.”
Oh, she knew of a strong, holy source, all right, but it would probably want to stuff her in the urn instead. “So, I need good arcana,” she said, distress lacing her voice. “And I’ve only got the bad kind.”
Geezer handed the urn back. “I don’t see why you couldn’t try—no arcana is really bad or good, in the end. It’s all just neutral.”
Celeste ran her fingers over the lid as she sat the jar in her lap. She wanted to believe that, but experience had taught her otherwise. After a moment, she stuffed it back into her bag. “Thank you,” she said, “and, um, would you please not tell anyone about the…”
“The what, dear?”
Celeste opened her mouth then snapped it back shut. Perhaps he had actually forgotten about the noxscura or was just being gracious, but either way, she would take it. “Thank you for your time, Geezer, but I should probably get going now,” she said as sweetly as she could.
The elderly mage popped out of the chair, spry and alert, waving around the parchment he’d written on. “Of course! I have lots of research to do!”
Hoping he would actually forget all of it the moment she left, she let him walk her to a drawn curtain even though it wasn’t the way they’d come in. When he pushed it back, it revealed a door, a symbol carved into the wood like a leaf torn in two. He made a thoughtful sound, like he hadn’t expected that, and then pulled the door open. On the other side was a vast forest, humid and lushly verdant, filled with wide-trunked trees and hanging vines.
“Wildwood?” the mage murmured, and then there was a squawk as a flurry of red feathers swept into the room just as Geezer shut the forest away. “Huh, well, that’s not the exit to East Road.”
The bird promptly splatted into the door and tumbled to the ground.
Celeste jumped back as the creature righted itself with a grumbly noise, glaring up at the two of them. Its black, hooked beak was a bit off center, but she wasn’t sure if it was naturally offset or a result of the crash. It stomped a taloned foot and took off again, leaving behind a scarlet feather.
“Zak’s so clumsy,” Geezer chuckled, then went to another curtain and opened the door behind it. On the other side, Celeste recognized Briarwyke in the darkness of late evening, though she didn’t see Baylen’s shop. “Well, West Road’s just as good as East, I suppose.”
When Celeste stepped out and turned to thank him a last time, Geezer and his hovel weren’t there. Instead, she stood at the side entrance of the garden attached to the largest house in Briarwyke, a massive manor that took up a quarter of the center circle. The garden was surrounded by a brick fence covered in more of those brambles found all over the village, but entwined with the dried-out thorns were little shoots of green as if to say spring was nearing.
She scurried away from the stranger’s property to stand beneath a lamppost on the only road that still had them intact. Squinting out at the circle, she could see the Dew Drop Inn’s torch lit across the way, but no one was about, likely all enjoying something delicious Halfrida had cooked up for dinner. Even the windows of the manor she’d been let out beside were darkened. Maybe she could go into the tavern and ask a few questions, but she was already worn from so many human interactions that day, and then she shuddered at the thought of the villagers finding out their latest trouble was actually her doing.
Geezer might have been forgetful, or he might have been kind, but he wouldn’t keep her secret forever, not if he couldn’t fix what was plaguing Briarwyke. But she could fix it—at least, he said she might be able to, and it was worth trying.
Celeste checked the road in both directions, and though she saw no one in the gloom of late evening, didn’t like being so exposed under the light. She flicked a finger over her locket, calling up a shadow of noxscura to surround the globe atop the pole. Deeper darkness closed in, and though that wouldn’t normally give her chills, a shiver ran through Celeste as if fingers were climbing down the nape of her neck.
“If it isn’t my savior.”
