Half a dozen Chinese urns lined pedestals along the wall, with glass cases interspersed between them. Magic pulsed in the air, thick shivery fingers that brushed against Lucien's skin. He could almost see waves of it, like heat shimmering in the distance on a hot day.
"It's an athame blade, isn't it?" He blinked through the pain of exposure, circling the empty glass case in front of him. A red velvet cushion rested forlornly on its pedestal, the shape of a dagger crushed into the material, but no sign of the actual implement itself. The case looked undisturbed.
"There were three of them: The Blade, the Chalice, and the Wand. Together they form the Relics Infernal. The Blade was forged from the iron of a fallen star and an obsidian hilt; the Chalice is carved from ivory and bone; and the Wand was cut from whale bone."
"Why create them?"
"Curiosity on my behalf," Drake replied. "And power on the others. I was eighteen and rising swiftly through the ranks of the Order. The previous Prime was a bastard of the most unimaginable depravities. My friend Tremayne meant to see himself in this seat." His eyes dwelled on the empty case. "The spell craft was learned from a grimoire that Tremayne had purchased in his travels in the Orient. It made sense to me to wield it, even knowing the dangers, and my ex-wife, Morgana, always craved power. It is said that demons taught us the secrets of sorcery, opening our eyes to the power that we could wield. What else could they teach us? What could a Greater Demon know?" A faint grimace. "At that stage, I had not yet learned the consequences of dabbling in the darker arts. Just because one can do something—"
"Doesn't mean that one should," Miss Martin murmured.
They shared a faint smile. It spoke of a long familiarity.
"Without the other relics...?" Lucien asked.
"By itself it is still powerful, still dangerous," the Prime replied. "One of the secrets none of us understood, or I hope that none of us understood at the time, was that the Relics Infernal need a Grave sacrifice to work, not just blood. Once cut by the Blade, it's very difficult to stop bleeding." He held out his wrist, unbuttoning his cufflinks. A faint silvery scar traced his olive skin. "We all sacrificed blood to the original attempt of the ritual. It was my first inkling that all was not as it seemed. I told the others, then and there, that I had no intentions of continuing."
Death magic. Despite himself, Lucien was fascinated. "And?"
"They agreed, but I saw the look in Tremayne's eyes. The Blade can be used to steal another's power for a brief time, by draining their blood and using it to fuel spell craft. At that stage, my ex-wife and I decided it was too dangerous to leave the objects in his care."
"You mean, Morgana wanted them in her own hands," Miss Martin said wryly.
"As I said, I had not yet learned certain consequences associated with power." The Prime stepped back. "She was a master of illusions, her particular talents running to deception. She created copies of the relics, and I switched them. Tremayne had no inkling of what I'd done until it was too late, and... by that time, the Prime, Sir Davis, had begun to hear word of our little experiments."
This was the part of the story Lucien knew well. Sir Davis had sent his Sicarii assassins for Tremayne and de Wynter, dragging them before the entire Order at the Equinox where he'd demanded one of them give him challenge, or he would see Morgana executed first. Tremayne had demurred, not yet having the experience to fight a man of the Prime's worth.
And de Wynter would have done anything for his wife at that stage.
"Once I became Prime, Tremayne was furious," the duke explained. "He tried to use the Blade against me, and of course, not even Morgana's illusions could conceal the fact that I wasn't bleeding as I should be. He realized what we'd done and demanded the relics back. In the quarrel, I cast him from the house and warned him never to set foot in my sight again, or I would kill him myself."
The case was perhaps three feet wide and four foot long. Lucien ran his fingers along it, the instant thrum of the case's wards almost blinding him. For a moment, the hallway was full of dancing colors. The duke seemed mainly made of saddened greens, whilst Miss Martin had an almost sickly tinge of yellow mixed with desperate grays.
Lucien touched his nose to see if it was bleeding.
Miss Martin's hand slid through his and relief was instant. Serving as his Anchor, she effortlessly dispersed the overwhelming taint of sorcery between them so that it wasn't concentrated solely on him. It let him breathe again.
"You're a Sensitive?" she murmured.
Such sorcerers could feel the very thread of a spell, working out how to manipulate it, though it often left them overwhelmed. He couldn't tell her the truth though, so he just shrugged.
"Perhaps we should adjourn somewhere quiet, where you may prepare yourself?" the duke interrupted. "What shall you need?"
"A bowl of purified water, an athame, and..." He glanced back at the warded case, wondering why the spell craft surrounding it hadn't changed, as it should have if it had been opened and the wards displaced. "That piece of velvet should suffice."
The Arts of Divination were a gift through his mother's side of the family. She'd been the Cassandra at the time, the strongest seer in a generation. Though Lucien didn't have her abilities to forecast, he could scry over a particular distance and had a certain amount of control over psychometry, the ability to divine an object's history.
Both the duke and Miss Martin were silent as Lucien prepared himself, sitting on the ground and forcing his breath to ease until he was aware of every single aspect of his body. The Void washed through him, leaving stillness in its wake and his senses focused to pinpoint accuracy.
Lucien reached out and picked up the athame the duke had provided for him, slicing one of his other fingers. Blood dripped into the bowl, and he plunged the piece of velvet into the stained waters, whispering words of power under his breath. Instantly, his mind connected to the piece of fabric, images flashing at him one after the other—the dagger, hands stroking the fabric, magic twisting around it—then back further to the fine nap and weave, as someone worked unfinished threads to create it... Lucien tried to push all of that away, trying to focus on what had happened in the early hours of dawn.
Where are you now? he scried.
There was nothing, only the vibrating image of the house painted onto the back of his eyelids.
Panting hard, Lucien released the skeins of vision. Divination unraveled, as though it had never occurred. Everything distracted him. The hair on his arms, each individual pore standing to bright revue. The swirl of dust motes through the air, circling around the Prime, as if he'd moved, and the man himself... Harsh grains of freshly shaved stubble, a tiny scar under his lip, and the glints of silver in his irises... Lucien could almost feel the beginning of a scrying lock on the man, images swirling up in his mind.
A woman laughing, the sound echoing in his ears. A child's voice calling out, 'Mama!' And a somewhat watery version of Rathbourne Manor in Kent, though it seemed as if it had come directly from before the renovations of 1862. Lucien pulled away from it. A grave sprang to mind. The Prime standing guard over it in the snow, staring sadly down at the words on it. A handful of words carved into the granite. In memory. The son I never knew. 1868.
