The Golden Tower (Magisterium #5)(33)

Call looked down at the floor.

“Choose another counterweight and do it soon. No, that person won’t be Aaron, but they will keep you alive.”

Call still didn’t speak.

Master Rufus gave a long sigh. “I can’t tell you to be more careful, not when the Assembly is sending you up against Alex. But if this is about guilt —”

“It’s not,” Call said quickly.

Master Rufus put his hand on Call’s shoulder. “Aaron’s death was never your fault.”

Call nodded uncomfortably.

He’s right, said Aaron.

“None of this is your fault, Call. That would be like blaming yourself for being born.” Master Rufus waited a moment, as though expecting Call to reply, but he didn’t.

“I’ve been thinking,” Master Rufus went on. “About my own situation. About how one has to sometimes face uncomfortable things.”

“Are you going to tell your husband?” Call said. “About being a mage?”

The older man gave a rueful smile. “If we get through this, yes.”

There was a knock on the door. Master Rufus went to answer it, swinging the door wide. On the other side was Alastair.

He looked haggard and drawn, as if he hadn’t slept in a few days. His hair was rumpled. “Call!” he exclaimed, pushing past his old teacher. He reached Call and seized him in a hug.

“Your father has been very worried about you,” said Master Rufus, when Alastair stopped thumping Call on the shoulder blades and stood back to look at him. “He’s been staying in the Magisterium since you first fell ill.”

“I thought I heard your voice,” Call said, remembering his dad’s words tangled up among the flood of other memories and visitors.

Alastair cleared his throat. “Rufus, could Call and I have some time alone?”

“Certainly.” Polite as always, Rufus showed himself out.

Alastair and Call sat down on the sofa while Havoc trotted over to investigate. After nosing at Alastair’s pant leg, he curled up and fell asleep on his shoe.

“All right, Call,” Alastair said. “I know this wasn’t the flu or something like that. What happened to you? You were shouting about burning down cities and marching ahead of armies. Is this something to do with the Enemy?”

Be careful what you tell him, Aaron warned as Call opened his mouth. If he thinks you’re in danger, he’ll drag the whole Magisterium into it.

He was right, Call knew. So he told his father an edited version of events: that Constantine’s memories had been walled up in his head, that he had let them loose when he’d thought he needed to save his friends, that they’d overwhelmed him until he’d gotten control and shut them back down again.

Alastair was already half out of his seat. “I don’t like the sound of this. We should get Master Rufus — surely there’s something the mages here can do to make sure those memories either stay put or are removed forever.”

No, Aaron warned. If they start fiddling around in here, there’s no telling what might happen.

“Wait,” Call said. “What did they tell you? Did they tell you about Alex Strike?”

“The boy who came back as a Devoured of chaos? Yes, but …”

“Did they tell you they expect me to figure out how to defeat him?”

Alastair sank back onto the couch. “You? But you’re just a kid.”

“I’m the only Makar they have,” said Call. “And no one knows how to defeat a Devoured of chaos.”

Alastair looked at him in horror. “My car is parked outside,” he said in a low voice. “We could run, Call. You don’t have to stay here. We could lose ourselves easily out in the normal world.”

“But then,” said Call, “I think a lot of people would die.”

“But you would live,” said Alastair, intensity in his gaze. It made Call feel good to know that Alastair put Call’s life above everything else in the world, but the only thing that would make Call different from Constantine or from Maugris was if he didn’t.

Again he remembered the Cinquain, the line he’d added: Call wants to live. Again and again he’d thought about it, ashamed. Now that line seemed to cut to the heart of the terrible desire that had led him to become a monster.

Okay, several different monsters.

Call, Aaron said. Everyone wants to live.

And everyone deserved to live. Even if that meant Call put his own life at risk.

“I really have to try,” he told his father. “And I even have a plan. It just — I need some Devoureds to help me. I know a Devoured of fire, but I need three others, for the other three elements.”

“And what happens to them?” asked Alastair.

Call shook his head. “They un-Devour him. Regurgitate him. Get him puked up from chaos. And then they wind up being in the same danger the rest of us will be in, fighting a really angry regurgitated Makar.”

Alastair blinked a few times. Finally, he shook his head and spoke. “Yeah, I know a guy.”

“You do?”

“Up in Niagara. He was in the war. That was when he got Devoured. He might listen if we put the case to him.”

“Can you drive?” Call asked.

“What?” Alastair said. “Right now?”