Taken by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #8)(42)

“Not even you?”

“Not even me. Coupled with the recent letter from my mother, Manuc seemed like the most likely place to start looking. In fact, Aunt Deryna sent a message warning me of what had happened that found me just as I was embarking on the east coast.” He looked grave. “She warned me to prepare for the worst—that it was unlikely I’d still find you alive. It is a good thing she underestimated you, as so many have done before.”

I grimaced. “No, her prognosis was pretty spot-on. I’m very lucky to be alive. Your grandmother definitely didn’t intend for me to survive those awful tests. And now that she sent you off to that horrible desert with me, I can’t imagine she cares for anyone at all. All that bluster about you being part of the family…I have to wonder how she treats her enemies, if this is how she acts toward her loved ones.” I shook my head in disgust.

Iannis laughed sharply. “At least now you know why I don’t like to speak of my Tua heritage. I’ve often wished my mother were an ordinary mage or even human. My greatest ambition is to be as unlike Ta’sradala and her ilk as possible.”

“When you consider how helpless we were against Tua power, maybe you can better understand the resentment of ordinary humans and shifters against mages.”

Iannis frowned. “It is not at all the same. We are not congenitally capricious and amoral—”

I raised an eyebrow. “In some cases, it is exactly alike, especially from the victims’ point of view.”

Iannis was silent for a while, but the frown lingered.

“Besides, not all Tua are evil like Ta’sradala, no matter how powerful they are compared to us,” I continued on, mollifying my accusation a bit. “The younger ones I met were a lot more reasonable and actually helped me survive. I think you were just unlucky to get stuck with Ta’sradala as your ancestor.”

“Very likely,” Iannis admitted. “Kidnapping my grandfather was rather outrageous, even for her race.”

“In any case, I’m very glad you found me, even if we are stuck in this place,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Now we just have to figure out how to get out of here.”

He brightened at that. “Once we can get back to Recca, we can use my gulaya to go straight home,” Iannis said. “But we need to figure out how to ensure the dimension spell takes us there rather than somewhere else. We got lucky last time, landing in a world with breathable air and food, but we may not the next time around.”

“I wish I could transmit the dimension walking spell, the way the Tua did to me,” I said. “There are…technical aspects that I don’t understand, and I’m not sure I even have the words to put them into human language. I feel like if we could just figure out the formula behind the magic, we could direct the spell to where we want it to go.”

Iannis frowned. “The only way I know of doing that is the knowledge transfer.”

I bit my lip at that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do a knowledge transfer—I knew how the spell worked, thanks to Fenris’s knowledge, and it could only be done once. If the transfer was successful, Iannis would have access to my entire lifetime of memories. Fenris was incredibly brave and selfless to give me access to his past—if I scoured them thoroughly enough, I could access his most intimate secrets, his most humiliating moments, recollections of all the stupid things he had said and done over the long decades of his life. I did not want to know all that about Iannis, and would have refused if he’d offered. Was I really willing to give Iannis that same power over me? I trusted him with my life, but could our upcoming marriage survive if I exposed myself so completely to him? I would have to live with him afterward, knowing that he had intimate knowledge of everything about me, that I had no secrets left.

“I’m not sure that I’m ready to do that,” I said cautiously. “Not unless there really is no other option.”

Iannis nodded. “I don’t blame you. It is a big step, and irrevocable.”

We spent another two days and nights out on that prairie as we tried to figure out the solution. This time we hunted down one of the quasis, knowing the meat would last us much longer than a deer. The herd of giant bovines were unafraid when we approached in human form, telling us that they had never been hunted by our kind, but the moment I changed into a panther and sprang for the weakest among them, an older quasi with a marked limp, they scattered. Between my hunting prowess and Iannis’s magic, we were able to bring down the lame quasi easily enough, and we enjoyed its meat even as the novelty of our surroundings began to wear off.

On the third morning, as I sipped a weak tea we’d brewed from some prairie flowers that Iannis had determined were safe to ingest, I sorted through the knowledge the Tua had given me for what seemed like the millionth time. On a whim, I gathered it all together, then repacked it into the shining trunk it had come in, conjuring it again in my mind’s eye from wherever it had disappeared to.

I wonder if I can replicate the trunk in my mind, I thought as I drummed my fingers against my thigh. I held the knowledge in my mind’s eye and concentrated, willing a duplication to form. To my delight, the trunk blurred, then split apart into two separate ones.

“Iannis,” I called. “Come here a second!”

“What is it?” he asked, moving away from the fire he’d been tending. He crouched down beside me, his brow furrowed in curiosity. “Have you found something?”