Magic Undying (Dragon's Gift: The Seeker #1)(68)
The thud of a body collapsing sounded. The blasts of power stopped coming.
I climbed to my feet and limped toward the form sprawled on the ground. The stone bit into my knees when I dropped beside him. My blades protruded from his chest, one embedded in each pectoral. His breath strangled in and out of his lungs, but he wasn’t dead. I grasped his rough shirt and shook him.
“What do you know about me?” I said.
“What”—he coughed—“you are.”
“But—”
His lips parted, and I snapped my mouth shut, frantic to hear what he had to say.
“FireSoul.”
I stumbled back, my stomach twisting. Chills raced over me. How could he know that? No one knew that but my deirfiúr.
“I’m a Mirror Mage.” My voice came out hardly louder than a whisper. I tried again, louder, fear choking my throat. “I’m a Mirror Mage!”
Panic welled in me, and I crawled back to him, reaching for his shirt again, desperate to shake answers from him.
His eyes were dimming, their gleaming black light turning a dark gray. A great breath shuddered out of his lungs, followed by stillness.
The light faded from his eyes, and his body disappeared. My blades, no longer embedded in a chest, clattered to the floor.
“No!”
My heart threatened to break my ribs. I hit the ground, frustration and fear beating in my chest.
The demon was gone. Not dead—you couldn’t really kill a demon—just send them back to whatever hell they’d originally come from. Normally very neat and tidy. Except this one had information about me, and my blades had been too accurate. The demon had seemed so strong when my first blade had found its mark. I’d wanted to question him more. This was what happened when I freaked out. Like a bull in a china shop. And it was the main reason I could never use my magic.
My breath echoed too loudly in my ears. Think, think. How could the demon have known that I was a FireSoul? Was it because this job was in Ireland, my homeland? At least, what I assumed was my homeland, given that I could speak Irish and had red hair.
One option was so terrifying I couldn’t even poke it with my mind. It was the bogeyman that lurked at the corner of my memories. Whenever I pressed too hard, it leapt up, bringing with it a splitting headache and adrenaline like nobody would believe.
I had to get out of there. Talk to Nix.
Quickly, I grabbed my blades, shoved them into their sheaths, then climbed to my feet. I limped to the altar, pain singing up my leg, and grabbed the golden chalice. It’s magic sang beneath my palm, an unsteady beat that indicated this was old magic. The perfect age for selling. There were other priceless objects too, no doubt tributes to the gods carved onto the columns.
My fingers itched to pocket a couple, namely a golden dagger encrusted with rubies and a strange hexagonal blade that looked wickedly sharp on all sides. Despite my terror, covetousness surged within me. My hand trembled as I reached toward the golden dagger. Just one touch. I wouldn’t take it.
No.
I sucked in a deep breath and clenched my fist. Not mine. Not mine. Like an addict resisting a fix, I dragged my gaze away from the glitter.
With a shaking hand, I pulled a small black rock out of an inner jacket pocket. My last transport charm. Like all magic that wasn’t my own, they were expensive and hard to come by. Del could make them because she could transport, but her power was limited and they commanded a lot of it, so she couldn’t make them often.
I should use the charm only in emergencies.
But this sure felt like a heck of an emergency.
I threw the stone to the ground. It shattered and a glittering silver cloud rose in front of me. I stepped into the sparkling stuff and envisioned my home. Magic grabbed me around the waist and threw me through the ether.
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Author’s Note
Hey, there! I hope you enjoyed reading Magic Undying as much as I enjoyed writing it. In addition to being a writer, I’m also an archaeologist. This influences my books enormously and is why so many of them have scenes set at historic sites. I try to stay as true to history as I can, but sometimes I have to fiddle with things to make a more entertaining story. If you’re interested in reading about what I borrowed from history and what I modified, read on. At the end, I’ll talk a bit about why Del and her deirfiúr are treasure hunters and how I try to make that fit with archaeology’s ethics (which don’t condone treasure hunting, as I’m sure you might have guessed).
Magic Undying is particularly full of history and myth, even for one of my books. I chose to go with a Guinevere, Merlin, and King Arthur theme after talking to my friend Melly about Tintagel Castle. I visited a few years ago and loved it, but I missed Merlin’s Cave, which Melly highly recommended. When it came time to send Del to a cool location, Tintagel Castle and Merlin’s Cave popped right to mind. Which, of course, led me down the path to the myths surrounding King Arthur.
As I mentioned in the book, there are many stories surrounding King Arthur and his compatriots. According to British folklore, he was a hero who may have defended Britain against Saxon invasion in the late fifth and early sixth centuries AD, though historians still aren’t sure if he was real.
For Magic Undying, I created a Frankenstein of Arthurian legend, taking the different stories and sticking them together to create a mystery for Del and Roarke to solve. Tintagel Castle, Glastonbury Abbey, and Richmond Castle were not from the same stories or even the same cultures. Arthur is associated with Tintagel Castle through Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth century book, Historia Regum Britanniae. According to Geoffrey, Arthur was conceived at Tintagel. Merlin’s Cave is a real place beneath Tintagel, but it wasn’t made famous until the nineteenth century, when Alfred Tennyson wrote the twelve narrative poems Idylls of the King. In this version of events, Arthur was washed ashore at Merlin’s Cave as a baby and carried to safety by Merlin.