The Sorcery Code (The Sorcery Code #1)(34)
To her shock, on a few of the jars, she saw labels with her name on them. Blaise’s memories of her . . . He must’ve thrown them away in a fit of rage. Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep, shuddering breath, trying to keep the tears that were burning her eyes from escaping. She hadn’t expected this visit to be so painful, the memories to be so fresh.
Reaching down, she pocketed one of the droplets, doing her best to avoid cutting her hand on the shards of glass lying all around it. Then, trying to regain her equilibrium, she exited the room and headed upstairs.
All around her, she could see dust-covered windowsills and musty-looking furnishings. Whatever Blaise’s mental state, he clearly wasn’t taking care of his house. Not a good sign, as far as she was concerned.
Going from room to room, she determined that Blaise wasn’t there after all. Relieved, Augusta realized that he must’ve left the house after all. That was a good sign, as addicts rarely came out unnecessarily. Unless they ran out of Life Captures—which Blaise hadn’t, judging by the jars downstairs. Could it be that Ganir was wrong again? After all, his spies had apparently misinformed him about the size of the peasant army Barson’s men would be facing. Why not this also? But if they weren’t wrong, then what did Blaise want with all those Life Captures he’d been getting?
Consumed with curiosity, she entered Blaise’s study again, the familiar surroundings making her chest tighten. They’d spent so much time here together, exploring new spells and coming up with new coding methodologies. This was where they’d invented the Interpreter Stone and the simplified arcane language to go with it—a discovery that had transformed the entire field of sorcery.
Perhaps she should leave now. It was obvious that Blaise wasn’t home, and Augusta no longer felt comfortable invading his privacy in this way.
Turning, she started walking out of the room when an open set of scrolls caught her attention. They were ancient and intricate, reminding her of the type of writings she’d seen in the library of Dania, another Council member. As though her feet had a mind of their own, Augusta found herself approaching the scrolls and picking them up.
To her shock, she saw that they had been written by Lenard the Great himself—except she’d never seen these notes before. She and Blaise had studied everything the great sorcerer had done; without the base of knowledge laid by Lenard and his students, they would’ve never been able to create the Interpreter Stone and the accompanying magical language. She should’ve come across these scrolls before, and the fact that she was seeing them now for the first time was incredible.
Skimming them in disbelief, Augusta comprehended the extent of the wealth of knowledge Blaise had been concealing from the world. These old scrolls contained the theories on which Lenard the Great had based his oral spells—the theories that provided a glimpse into the nature of the Spell Realm itself.
Why had Blaise not told anyone about them? Now even more curious, she reached for another set of notes lying on the desk.
It was a journal, she saw immediately—Blaise’s recording of his work.
Fascinated, Augusta riffled through the papers and began reading.
And as she read, she felt the fine hair on the back of her neck rising. What was contained in these notes was so horrifying she could hardly believe her eyes.
Putting down the journal, she cast a frantic glance around the study, wanting to convince herself that this couldn’t possibly be real—that it was all the ramblings of a madman. Her gaze fell upon the Life Capture Sphere, and she saw a single droplet glittering inside.
Reaching for it with a trembling hand, she put it in her mouth, letting the experience consume her.
*
Sitting there in his study, Blaise couldn’t stop thinking about Gala—about his wondrous, beautiful creation. Closing his eyes, he pictured her in his mind—the perfect features of her face, the deep intelligence gleaming in her mysterious blue eyes. He wondered what she would become. Right now, she was like a child, new to everything, but he could already see the potential for her intellect and abilities to surpass anything the world had ever seen.
His attraction to her was as startling as it was worrisome. She was his creation. How could he feel this way about her? Even with Augusta, he hadn’t experienced this kind of immediate connection.
Trying to suppress those thoughts, he turned his attention to the fascinating matter of her origin. The way she’d described the Spell Realm was intriguing; he would’ve given anything to witness its wonders himself.
Perhaps there was a way. After all, Gala’s mind was quite human-like, and she had survived there . . .
*
Gasping, Augusta regained her sense of self. Breathing heavily, she stared around the study, reeling from what she’d just seen. What had Blaise done? What kind of monstrosity had he created?
This was a disaster of epic proportions. If Augusta understood correctly, Blaise had made an inhuman intelligence. An unnatural mind that nobody—not even Blaise himself—could comprehend. What would this creature want? What would it be capable of?
Unbidden, an old myth about a sorcerer who had tried to create life entered Augusta’s mind, making her stomach roil. It was the kind of tale that peasants and children believed, and logically, Augusta knew there was no truth to it. But she still couldn’t help thinking about it, remembering the first time she’d read the horror story as a child—and how frightened she had been then, waking up screaming from nightmares of a ghoulish creature that killed its creator and his entire village. Later on, Augusta had learned the truth—that the sorcerer in question had actually been experimenting with cross-breeding various animal species and that one of his creations (a wolf-bear hybrid) had escaped and wreaked havoc on the neighboring town. Still, by then it was too late. The story had left an indelible impression on Augusta’s young mind, and even as an adult, the idea of unnatural life terrified her.