Page 148 of Turncloak

“Have you checked for magical frequencies in the water? On the rocky platform?”

Miret nodded sagely. “Other than whatever’s inside that evil chest, there are no other enchantments in this cave. The water is just water.”

Saffron raised her wand. “Et ascevolo,” she incanted, hoping to levitate the chest over the water, but the spell simply sank into it like a body disappearing into quicksand. There was a thirst to the vanishing magic, as though the malevolent spirit inside had drunk it like a tonic. “Does the chest have locking charms on it? A password, perhaps?”

“Not that I can tell.”

Levan shifted his weight. “Sarcane wouldn’t risk a password—such a thing could so easily be lost to the sands of time. He didn’t hide the prophecy so that nobody could ever find it. He would have just destroyed it, if that was his aim. He wanted the right mage to find it.”

“So Sarcane would have wanted the right mage to kill those wardholders?” Saffron asked quietly, knowing the question would hit like a hammer, but needing the answer anyway. “Or was there another way we didn’t see?”

Levan took several steadying breaths. “I think he would have known the right mage would have done whatever it took. Your father wrote that he had foreseen many of your heinous deeds leading up to this point. Sarcane would have known you’d take a handful of lives to potentially save many.”

“Assuming this does foretell me preventing a war,” Saffron countered, that feeling of dread in her belly knotting tighter now that they were right up at the coal face of the future.

“Yes,” Levan said quietly. “Assuming that.”

He did not meet her gaze—because Miret was already stripping off his clothes.

Miret’s body was narrow, wrinkled, covered in skin tags and several scars unbefitting of a scholar who spent most of his time in a library. Saffron had the acute sensation of looking at an old map.

In naught but his knee-length underwear, he waded into the water.

“Haleen’ah!” he gasped—the Eqoran cursing equivalent of fucking hells.

“What? What is it?” Levan dashed forward, kneeling by the edge of the black pool and extending a hand.

“It’s cold.” Miret’s teeth chattered violently as he kicked off from the edge.

He made clumsy paddling motions toward the rocky platform. His progress was slow and stuttering, and Saffron thought it was a bit of a stretch to call himself a swimmer, but given that he was risking hypothermia for the sake of her mission, it didn’t seem polite to criticize his technique.

Eventually the old man reached the platform, hauling himself up with a surprising amount of upper body strength. Though his arms were slender, the brown skin wrinkled and papery, there was the unmistakable cording of muscle and sinew beneath the surface. His shivering intensified upon the dark rock, and Saffron worried he might expire there and then.

“Et ascevolo,” she incanted again, hurriedly this time, levitating his clothes over the surface of the water and landing them in a heap beside him.

“In retrospect,” Miret muttered, clumsily wrapping his raiment back around himself, “perhaps I should have tried to levitate myself.”

Saffron laughed. “If it were that easy, magekind would have mastered birdlike flight many centuries ago.” It was theoretically possible, but most were afraid to try—if the caster’s magical well emptied halfway through, or they were otherwise distracted or wounded while holding the enchantment, the flier would plummet to their death.

Once Miret was dressed, he tremulously knelt to examine the chest. “Deminite, indeed. Explains why it couldn’t be levitated. Kaf juriat…”

How curious.

The dread inside Saffron deepened, darkened. The urge to run, to never look back, or perhaps to curl up in a ball and perish.

Thanks for this, Dad, she thought bitterly.

“It would appear,” Miret said mildly, after running his palms over the chest one more time, “that I can simply open the clasp and lift the lid. Shall I?”

No, screamed some primal instinct inside Saffron.

“Yes,” said her mouth, because what else could they do? “We only have a quarter of an hour before the tide comes in, and we cannot levitate the chest out of the cave, let alone up a sheer cliff face.”

“Very well,” Miret said calmly.

Too calmly—eerily, supernaturally calmly. As though being…coaxed by something.

Something unseen, something terrible.