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“Before Tracy Gordon died,” I said, very aware of the unsteadiness of my voice, “he said, ‘they make sure we become summoners.’ Tracy’s grandparents were summoners, and his parents died under strange circumstances. If my dad hadn’t died, I’d never have been raised by my aunt—my summoner aunt.” My hands tightened into fists, nails biting into my palms. “How far do you go to make sure summoners become summoners?”
Mzatal’s face abruptly slid into the unreadable mask. Without a word, he pivoted and exited to the balcony, hands clenched into fists behind his back.
I stared after him, going cold. “Mzatal?” I hesitated, then followed him out. “Mzatal, what the fuck?” I asked, my gut clenching even tighter as I stood behind him. My dad had been killed by a drunk driver, or so I’d believed until recently.
Have you ever looked at the accident report? Tracy had said. I have. He shouldn’t have died in that wreck.
My breath clogged in my throat. “Did…did you have my dad killed?”
Mzatal dropped his head and gripped the rail, not answering.
A red haze filled my vision. “Did you kill my dad?” I hauled off and punched him hard in the back by the right kidney. He tensed, but I didn’t give a shit about reprisals or consequences. “Did you? Answer me, motherfucker!”
“Not directly. No,” he said, head still lowered and his voice strained though filled with intensity.
“Turn around, goddammit!” I demanded, my voice shaking and my hands clenched into hard fists. “What do you mean, ‘not directly’? Did you order it?”
Mzatal turned to face me, his eyes deeply haunted. “I mean that if—if—this was a deliberate act at the hands of Katashi or his agents, then I am responsible,” he said, shaking his head. “I did not order it.”>Some of my tension slid away, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks,” I said. “Time to get back to work then.” He grinned in response and within a minute had surrounded himself with a ring of floaters.
Smiling, I watched him for a moment while I wondered what the hell he did to chill out so quickly. We both worked in focused silence for a while, me on my basics, and he on diagram diagnostics.
After about a half hour, Idris stood in the center of a complete diagram, looking it over and making minor tweaks. “This is one thing I love about working in the demon realm,” he said, “being able to use the floaters instead of chalk. I mean, apart from it being way more efficient, it’s so much easier to make adjustments.” He shook his head, let out a low whistle. “I still can’t believe you summoned Lord Rhyzkahl. On your own. With chalk.”
I lifted my shoulders in a self-conscious shrug. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”
The exasperated look he gave me told me exactly how naïve I sounded.
I cast my gaze over the shimmering ring around him, then looked back at him, frowning. “Wait. If I didn’t use chalk, then how the hell else would I do it on Earth?”
“Well, with floaters,” he said with a duh! tone. “But of course you haven’t finished the shikvihr, so that’s not possible for you yet.”
My bafflement increased. “You can use floaters on Earth? And what does the shikvihr have to do with it?”
He looked up at me, blinked. “Everything!” Idris took a big breath. “Okay, so you’ve seen the shikvihr, right?” He didn’t even wait for me to nod, simply hurried on, clearly excited by the topic. “See, there’s eleven rings to it. Each ring learned here causes a permanent enhancement to potency-holding and general skills usage. In the demon realm, you can dance the rings you know and use the specific attributes of those rings. With me so far?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s like a magic kata-thing that trains mind and body and all that.”
A pained expression flickered over his face, but apparently I wasn’t wrong enough for him to correct the finer details of my analogy. “There’s an exponential increase between the rings, so it’s a huge advantage to learn as much as possible,” he continued. “And even though you can’t dance the shikvihr on Earth unless you know the whole thing, the passive enhancement does carry over, so it boosts summoning and warding and stuff.”
“So a summoner on Earth could have it, but it wouldn’t be anything obvious.”
“Yeah, but it’s not common anymore since it can only be learned in the demon realm from a lord. Plus, it’s a super big challenge to learn.”
Considering I’d never even heard of it before, I had to agree with him about its not being common. “But what does that have to do with using floaters on Earth?” I asked again.
He grinned. “Sorry. If you complete the full shikvihr here, then you can actually dance the shikvihr, floaters and all, on Earth. Once you’ve laid the shikvihr, you can use other floaters. No need for chalk and blood!”
Well, that sounded cool as shit. Looked like the damn thing was worth learning after all and not simply as a stepping stone for returning home.
Mzatal entered, glanced at me, then approached the diagram Idris had created, eyes traveling over it in assessment.
Idris made one final adjustment. “I’ve reset the parameters you wanted, my lord. How does it look?”
“Stable,” Mzatal said, nodding approval. “It will serve. Go lay it in the chamber now.”
Idris grinned and dissipated the diagram with several broad sweeps of his arms, then headed out.
Mzatal’s gaze followed him as he exited.
