“Hmm? That’s all right, Zak needs to stretch his wings on occasion. Come, sit, sit.”
The two traded glances and returned to the seats, Celeste still carrying the clear crystal. She gave it a long look over, a red leaf suspended inside with intricate veins and pointed tips. It was beautiful, but also torn in half, so a strange choice to preserve in a gem. She delicately placed it on a side table where it sat like it belonged.
“I didn’t always not remember,” said Geezer, still reverently staring at the box, “at least, I think I didn’t always not used to. It’s just thatright nowI don’t—remember, that is—and there is evidence to suggest that the not-remembering is a bit on purpose. Now, I don’t share this with many, but I think perhaps you might understand it best, Midnight.”
Celeste was passed the box, the heft of it ordinary, but its potential daunting. As she pulled up the lid, she hoped she wasn’t opening the second worst container in Briarwyke. But inside, there was only parchment, the edges of it torn like the pages had been ripped from a book.
Of course, some of the most dangerous things in existence are just words scribbled on parchment, but when one is dealing with shadowy entities, paper seems rather mundane.
One page was a recipe, or an attempt at one at least, the ingredient list long and scratched through a number of times with differing amounts, each off by a pinch here and a sprig there. Another was something like a journal entry, depicting a day of research that quickly devolved into a romantic entanglement with a fellow mage, including some anatomy described in the most salacious way she’d ever seen written. She quickly stuffed that page behind the others and looked up to Geezer. “What, um…is all this?”
“So, of all the things I don’t remember, something Idoremember is the moment I stopped remembering. It was an early spring morning when I woke, and I was quite surprised to find myself squeezed between two rocks high up on Ashrein Ridge with nothing but my robes, this little knife, a vague sense of arcana prickling at my skin, and those pages. Zak was there too, just staring. He’s followed me around ever since.”
Celeste glanced quickly at the tapestry that hung over the door the bird had escaped through, then back down at the next torn page. It was filled with a list of locations, all but two with a line drawn through them. This she offered to Reeve, and he looked over the crossed-out places, cities with an additional location or name beside. “There are two left,” he said.
“Yes, I’m still on Briarwyke, but I’ve been to all the others.” Geezer cleared his throat. “When I woke in the mountains, the list was full, so I assumed I was to go to the first place, Elderpass, and I did. I asked after, well…myself, but no one recognized me, which was fair since I didn’t recognize myself either, didn’t even have my own name. I went right to the inn listed alongside it, and I scoured the city to find nothing until I accidentally broke a curse on The Jealous Gentleman. That was, oh, twenty years ago now?”
Celeste’s eyes went wide.
“But I gleaned very little, so I moved on. Each place I asked after myself, and none of them knew me just as well as I didn’t know me, but the people all had problems, and I found I was traveling in the wake of a blood mage who had done some despicable things many, many years prior. That, I thought, must have been the purpose of the list, so I sought out the blood mage’s vile deeds, fixed them, and moved on. But then I came here, and I’ve been stuck for almost four years.”
“A blood mage?” Celeste’s fingers curled along the hem of her dress. She knew two rather familiarly, but they hadn’t been committing atrocities two decades ago, at least she didn’t think so. And then she remembered Geezer’s reaction to seeing her manipulation of the noxscura. “Wait, you don’t think I’m—”
“No, no, you’re not the type, don’t nick yourself with every other spell, you don’t even carry a dagger! And you’re too young and too clumsy to be the one I’m after anyway, no offense. I gathered from my travels that about forty years ago, this blood mage was doing research on noxscura, they had a partner, and the two caused mishaps all over the realm. The me that once had all his memories seemed to want the me whose brain was addled to follow in their wake and ultimately to end up here.”
Reeve tapped the page he held. “Well, no, he—er, you—wanted you to end up inM.”
Beneath Briarwyke, a single letter was written at the very end of the list, beside it a drawing that might have been a tree or a cloud or an internal organ, but whatever it was, it looked shorn in two. Celeste didn’t ask since she figured Geezer wouldn’t know.
“Well, you’re right about that, but I worry I might have lost my memories in the midst of writing. There could be a hundred more places to go, for all past me knows! Though it may not matter because I’ve been stuck on Briarwyke, and, you know, I’m pretty old.” With that, he cracked a hard laugh.
“Eugene Fitzroy,” said Celeste, reading the name that was listed beside the village.
“Dead,” sighed Geezer. “Ten years on now. Wife went with the plague half a decade ago too. The son, Blondie, is all that’s left of the family, and the boy knows nothing but how to shoot an arrow straighter than the horizon—not that that’s useless, it just doesn’t help me. He gave me all the information he could when I came to the village, but everything was a dead end, even his father! Blondie let me root around in that manor and all, but he assured me nothing around here even needs fixing.”
Celeste bit her lip. “They’re all really used to their bad luck around here, they hardly notice when something’s amiss, but,”—she gazed over to Reeve and then back—“I am afraid we might have found the thing this blood mage you’re following had a hand in upsetting.”
She explained about the caverns beneath the village and the attack. “Syphon wants the sieves trapped around the town,” she said with certainty because she had thought about it nonstop and the conclusion was easy if uncomfortable to come to. Truly, what Syphon wanted was the noxscura trapped beneath the divine dome, but that bit of information could wait.
Reeve was watching her as she spoke, concern knitted into his brow, but no suspicion or disgust. She sat straighter and waited for the help she hoped Geezer would give them.
“So this Syphon, itisabsorbing other sieves?”
Celeste nodded. “There was one in the forge that we let out, a fire one, and then another underground that was blue. He got that one too.”
“Only one left,” said Geezer, eyes going glassy.
“What do you mean?”
Geezer blinked like snapping out of a dream. “He’s got two of the three kinds. If this entity can absorb and use them, we can only assume he’s looking to collect one of each. You may not be able to catch him, even with that apotrope, if there’s that much arcana inside him.” Geezer scratched at his nose. “And by all the gods, don’t let him get a hold of anymore.”
Celeste clutched onto the box, fingers digging in. “I really didn’t mean to, I just—”
Reeve laid a hand on her arm, his touch light but warm. “What’s done is done,” he said resolutely. “What should we do from here?”
“The apotrope you have, it’s made for a single sieve. You’ll have to purge him of the others before you can trap him.”
“We still don’t even know how to use it,” moaned Celeste, “and Syphon’s made to absorb things, not let them go.”
