Page 33 of The Deadliest Candidate (The Last Grand Archivist #1)
Chapter thirty-three
The Conduit
Fern spent the following days burying herself in her work. She needed to make up for the time she had lost trying to find a way into Saffyn’s office, and she was desperate, at this point, to avoid Léo Lautric.
She could not fathom what she felt about what had passed between them. All the emotions he drew from her intermingled like threads of spider silk, tangling themselves into a complex web. Her mistrust of him, all her suspicions, her questions, too, the mystery of him calling to her mind, luring her closer, the unexpected shock of sympathy she had felt when seeing his injured face, the strange, disquieting softness of his goodnight kiss.
And all the emotions she felt about Lautric were becoming entangled with everything she felt about her candidacy, Carthane—everything. Her ambition and her hard work, the old wounds of her parents and St Jerome, leaving Oscar behind and failing to keep Josefa safe.
She was so certain she wanted this; she had never wanted anything else. Fern was a realist above all things, her sense of logic forever imposing order upon her heart. She had never wished she could see her parents again, because she could not, and she had never wished for deeper connections, for friends or lovers, because she was always travelling, too focused on her work. Every decision she made was logical, and now, now that she needed to be, above all things, cool and collected and focused, now her heart was trying to wreak havoc on her mind.
Books were the solution, so Fern overwhelmed herself with reading.
The other candidates had a day’s head start on her, and every other team was stronger than hers by default of not having an exhausted, distracted Lautric to contend with. And without a mentor to aid her, Fern would need to work twice as hard as everybody else to keep up, so she worked thrice as hard instead.
After two days of assiduously avoiding one another, Lautric came to find Fern in the Invocation Wing. He greeted her with bleak courtesy and handed her a brown folder thick with pages. Fern opened it, flicking through the folder.
And found Lautric’s notes on all the reading Fern had assigned, a compiled shortlist of summoners for them to consider, complete with supporting evidence and a thorough bibliography. All were written in his hand—a narrow, hasty scrawl that trailed messily into margins, the cross strokes on the T’s overly long, the dots on the I’s almost flicks.
Despite his messy penmanship, the writing itself was clear, without flourish and to the point. Fern looked up at him with some surprise. “Oh. This is good work. ”
Lautric tilted his head with a melancholy half-smile. “You sound impressed, and yet this doesn’t feel like a compliment.”
“I wasn’t trying to compliment you.”
“Assuredly not,” Lautric said with a soft laugh. He leaned back against the edge of Fern’s escritoire and ran his hand distractedly through his hair. “What now?”
Fern glanced down at the notes. “Well, we’ve whittled the summoners down. Now we select the most powerful out of all of them.”
It took them an hour to decide who to shortlist. Though not knowledgeable, Lautric was malleable and elastic throughout their discussion. He was far from the ideal partner to have, and Fern still held firm the belief that Lautric was woefully under-qualified compared to some of the other candidates, but there were some advantages to having him for a partner.
For example, where Fern always worried about all the research she hadn’t done and all the knowledge she didn’t have, Lautric was content to make a decision based solely on what they had in front of them and gut feeling.
It was, to Fern’s tired, overly analytical brain, almost refreshing.
They eventually settled on Iago Zestra, a great summoner renowned for pioneering some of history’s most ambitious summonings. Famously, he had summoned an army for a Byzantine emperor, hundreds of soldiers made from shadow and mud, and he was also known for his more grandiose, theatrical summonings, such as showers of stars and celestial circles .
For the assignment, Fern and Lautric chose the final spell in Iago Zestra’s career. A spell named Circle of Angels, sometimes called Guardian Circle when used practically. Zestra’s most ambitious and grandiose spell.
Many believed it was a reworking and combination of myriads of other incantations, and some believed it was a Sumbra incantation he’d gained through dubious dealings with a Gateway’s entity; Zestra had a bleeding trail of dead wives and children in his wake, and died with no heir aside from his spells.
“It’s a complex incantation,” Lautric said thoughtfully. Night had fallen outside, rain slashing grey and loud against the windows of the Invocation Wing, almost drowning out his quiet voice. “A lot of parts. Can we perfect it in time?”
Fern worried her lips with her teeth, then gestured at the papers and books spread out across both their desks.
“Well, the incantations are complex, but we’ll have our notes. The Grand Archivists will almost certainly value our research over our recitations. Not all of them are great mages, but all of them are great scholars. Besides…” She hesitated and cast Lautric a sidelong glance. “The incantation is the least of my worries.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“My reserves,” Fern said. “They might not be enough for me to draw from.”
Lautric shook his head and took her hand in his, startling her. “Don’t worry. I can help with that.”
Fern pulled her arm back sharply, snatching her hand from his grip. “How?”
“The same way I did last time.” Lautric tilted his head. “You know I won’t harm you. ”
“I don’t think you’re going to harm me,” said Fern. It was mostly true. “I want to know how .”
“You don’t trust me,” Lautric said with a sigh.
Fern gave a tight smile. “Give me a reason to.” She leaned forward, eyes on his. “It’s not possible to share power with somebody else, and yet you gave me power, somehow, enough of it to last me days. I can’t think of any spell that could do such a thing. How did you do it?”
“I didn’t give you my power.”
Fern frowned. “But you gave me something .”
“Yes. I gave you Wild Magic.”
She remembered their conversation in the Sumbra Wing after the first assignment—it seemed so long ago now. Lautric had spoken of Wild Magic, of how it was the future, a superior form of magic to spellcraft. At the time, Fern had assumed he was lying, for the Lautrics relied too much on spellcraft. Now, she didn’t know what to believe.
“It can’t be controlled,” she said with a frown. “So how can it be harnessed? That’s impossible.”
“No, not harnessed—channelled. You need a conduit, something for it to pass through.”
Fern was silent for a moment, eyes wide. Lautric seemed completely serious. He had not been lying about his interest in Wild Magic, and now Fern wished she had asked him more. She had assumed his dishonesty at the cost of learning from him, and by doing so, put her prejudice before her scholarly curiosity.
“What conduit could possibly be powerful enough for Wild Magic?” she said.
“The human body,” Lautric said. He hesitated. “Sometimes. ”
Fern narrowed her eyes. “What you’re telling me is that you used your body as a conduit to channel Wild Magic from the source to me?”
Lautric nodded. “Yes.”
“No.” Fern sat back, her mind reeling. If it were true, such an ability would revolutionise the arcane world. “That’s just unheard of. If it was possible, why has it not been studied ? Why is it not taught in arcane institutions?”
“Because Wild Magic is free.” Lautric’s tone was bleak and earnest. “Why should it be studied—who would fund such studies when anybody can access and use it? It can’t be controlled, regulated or monopolised.”
“You’re saying Wild Magic could be easily accessible, so long as everybody learned to channel it?”
“Wild Magic is easily accessible.”
“It kills most of those who use it.”
Lautric sighed. “Yes, because using it from the source gives you no control over the flow. That’s why you need a conduit.”
“But you’re saying anybody could be a conduit.”
“In a sense. Yes, potentially, only—not so simply.” Lautric hesitated. “Being a conduit isn’t easy.”
Fern did not doubt it.
“And the cost?” she asked.
Lautric’s gaze slid out from under hers, became lost and faraway. His mouth opened but nothing came out. His thoughts seemed to swim darkly behind the limpid brown of his eyes, and Fern remembered his words during their argument.
I have no desire to lie to you, Fern, so I will simply have to withhold the truth for now.
She had assumed he was manipulating her then. But now Fern’s mind spun with questions. If Lautric could channel Wild Magic, who had taught him? What was the true cost? Did all Lautrics channel, and could that be the key to the power of their house? Had Lautric just told her something he should not have?
The dinnertime bell rang, and Lautric’s eyes snapped back to Fern’s.
“If you need energy for the incantation, I’ll help you,” he said. “In the meantime, we’d better focus on our research. As you said, that’s the most important part of the assignment.”
Fern nodded, and watched Lautric as he gathered his papers into their brown folder. He left with a distracted wave, and Fern didn’t see him again until the evening before the assignment.