Revenants Return

Chapter One

For any of you reading this book to learn magic, you might have noticed that the first few spells felt a bit easy. Don’t worry! Everything is going to get much harder from here on!

—­Bianca of Skael


The sun had only been up for an hour or so when a loud noise woke Ciara. Her eyes flew open, and she practically leapt out of the bed she’d put together the night before in Bianca’s old quarters in the Dragon Mage’s tower.

A second noise, and this time she recognized it: wood breaking.

Oh, right. Her magic teacher, Scorch, had mentioned he was going to build a door for the tower that morning. She rolled her eyes, annoyed at being awoken so early, and wondered how she could pay the dragon back.

And then it hit her. Scorch had said she needed to be ready for the Empire to return someday, so to practice her magic. Shouldn’t she be acting like that was a possibility now, this very morning? After all, who was to say it couldn’t be a Wyrm downstairs, breaking into the tower? Okay, the Emperor’s soldiers were nowhere close to Skael, so it was basically impossible that one might show up now, but Ciara was sure her teacher would be proud of her for not taking any chances.

And if Scorch himself ended up getting ambushed in an embarrassing way, well, he could hardly be mad at her for doing what he’d said. And maybe that’d teach him to be so loud that early in the morning.

Ciara slowly grinned, cracking her knuckles.

“Spellbook,” she whispered to the journal, which sleepily floated out from the spot beneath the blankets next to her, where she’d tucked it in the night before. “This is an emergency. There’s an intruder, and I need a spell to hide, so I can ambush them. Do you have any invisibility magic?”

At her words, the book shook itself fully awake, then flipped open, turning directly to her requested spell.

Only, there were two Draconic words on the page it had opened to. Ciara blinked in surprise, having never seen more than one word per page before. She moved to trace the top word, thinking it must be that . . . but then stopped, moving her finger down to the bottom word instead.

It could be either. And if she cast the wrong spell, who knew what kind of magic she might accidentally set off?

And now she could hear heavy footsteps climbing the stairs toward her room.

“Okay, new plan,” she whispered to the book. “I need an illusion to distract them. Do you have anything that might look a bit like me, if we put it in the bed? Then I can hide and jump out at them when they come in.”

The book dipped low in what seemed to be a nod, then turned to a new page—­a blank one this time. But before Ciara even had time to question that, a line began to be drawn over the page as if by an invisible pen, forming a new Draconic word.

The steps were getting closer, which meant she was out of time. Having no choice, she silently asked the Dragon Mage to protect her, then traced the word with her hand, hoping she was ready for whatever illusion the book might provide.

As it turned out, Ciara wasn’t even close to ready, given that she found herself staring right into her own face.

Somehow, her spellbook had created an exact illusion of her, right down to the clothing she’d fallen asleep in the night before, exhausted from creating food for the village and healing some of the direst cases of the Skael Cough.

That shouldn’t have been possible. All the spells in her spellbook had come from Bianca, who’d lived a thousand years ago. How could the book have written out a new Draconic word describing Ciara so long after Bianca had lived?

Unfortunately, there was no time to figure that out, as the footsteps had almost reached her floor. And she did have to admit that the illusionary Ciara would make for a great distrac­tion. She only wished it weren’t just standing frozen in the middle of the room, but instead could be lying in the bed as if she were asleep or something—­

As if it’d heard her thoughts, the illusion walked over to the bed, then lay down on top of the blankets.

Ciara’s mouth dropped open, but she was out of time. Creeping as silently as she could, she quickly hid behind Bianca’s ancient dresser just as the door to the room opened, revealing a hulking shadow on the other side.

Even an hour after dawn, the room was still fairly dim from the curtains covering the windows, so it was hard to see much of the intruder. The figure passed by her, moving toward the bed, and Ciara prepared herself, silently taking a deep breath. Then, as the invader reached a hand toward her illusionary self, the real Ciara launched her attack, smiling evilly.

“GOT YOU—­” she shouted, leaping straight at the intruder. But her words were cut off as an enormous hand shot out toward her, grabbing her in midair. A pair of glowing red eyes turned to face her, and she could almost hear the smile in her captor’s voice as he spoke.

“Oh, that was just sad,” Scorch the dragon said to her. “You really thought a human could surprise a dragon like that? We’re far too intelligent to ever fall for such things.”

Ciara rolled her eyes as the dragon set her down on the floor, then opened the curtains, letting the first rays of sunlight shine in. “Well, it wasn’t like I’d planned this for days or something,” she said, a little indignant. “You woke me up making all that noise downstairs, so I figured I’d pay you back and practice some magic, too. It’s like you said yesterday, I have to prepare for whenever the Emperor decides to come looking for Bianca’s journal. But how did you know that illusion wasn’t really me?”

“You mean this illusion?” Scorch said, pointing at the fake Ciara lying frozen on the bed, her eyes wide open. “The one that isn’t breathing, has no scent, and has a blanket sticking through it in places? Always create illusions over something solid, apprentice, or they’ll pass right through things, since they have no substance.” He paused as he stared down at the fake Ciara. “How exactly did you make this? It looks just like you, and that can’t be possible.”

Ciara snorted. “You’re right, it’s definitely not possible. You’re not seeing this. In fact, you’re probably still asleep in your thousand-­year nap. We didn’t rescue my mom from the Warden and send him running yesterday. This is all just a dream.”

He narrowed his eyes in annoyance, and she flashed her most charming grin at him. “You’re in a good mood.”

“Is that a bad thing?” she said, her smile widening. “We’re free of the Warden, and no actual Wyrms are coming, since we tricked them into turning around. My mom’s cured of the Skael Cough, and I can make food for everyone in the village to replace what the Warden’s Drakes destroyed with magic. This is the first time in years things are actually going well!”

“That must be why it feels so strange,” Scorch sniffed. “You still haven’t explained how you made this illusion.”

“I’ll explain that if you tell me how to make it look real,” Ciara said. “I want to have it ready for the next time my mom tries to make me eat her cabbage.” She wrinkled her nose. “She loves cabbage, and the smell alone makes me want to yack.”

Scorch sighed. “Magic doesn’t do anything unless you tell it to, apprentice. You need to picture your illusion as a living thing, keeping every detail in mind, right down to the nails on its foot fingers.”

“Toes?” Ciara asked.

“Whatever,” Scorch said. “It comes down to you actually believing it’s real. If you don’t, no one else will either.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t just believe in something that isn’t real, not when you know it’s a lie.”

“There’s knowing, and then there’s knowing,” Scorch said, making absolutely no sense. “Besides, I’ve seen enough of humans to know they’ll believe a lie whenever it’s easier than facing the truth. Reality can be hard for your people to accept sometimes, apprentice.”

Ciara paused, not really knowing how to respond to that. How could anyone decide to just believe a lie when they knew it wasn’t true? “So what you’re saying is, I’m probably going to have to eat her cabbage, then.”

“No, what I’m saying is, tell me how you created the illusion in the first place,” Scorch said, crossing his arms.

Ciara shrugged, which just seemed to irritate her teacher even more, and held up Bianca’s journal. “Ask my spellbook. I just mentioned that I wanted a spell to distract you. The book opened to a blank page and drew me the word in Draconic. You saw the illusion. It looked exactly like me, down to the stains on my pants.” She patted the book, and it wiggled back and forth proudly. “Pretty impressive, huh? Maybe the book learned some Draconic from Bianca!”

“Not possible,” Scorch said, rudely grabbing the book right out of her hands. “It couldn’t learn Draconic because it doesn’t have a mind. It only acts like that because it’s been magically animated. It’s not actually alive at all.”

The book made an odd growling noise in his hands, and he glared at it.

“Looks like it’s alive enough to not like you,” Ciara said, jumping up to grab the book back. But the dragon quickly lifted it out of reach, peering at it suspiciously.

“Did you say anything else to the book?” Scorch said as the journal sputtered its pages at him, almost like it was sticking out its nonexistent tongue.

“Just asked for an invisibility spell,” Ciara said, leaping off the bed this time with no better results. “But it showed me two Draconic words, and I had no idea which one to use.”

“Oh, there’s an easy explanation for that,” Scorch said, turning away from her as he brought the book back down to his level to give it a closer look. “Invisibility magic requires two words. It’s a complex illusion.”

“Wait, really?” Ciara said. “I didn’t know spells might need more than one.”

“Surprising, given how experienced you are.” He ignored her indignant look. “The more complicated the magic, the more words are required to get it right. You’ll learn some two-­and three-­word magic when you’re ready, which you definitely aren’t at the moment, but anything beyond that is probably not safe.”

“Not safe?” Ciara’s eyes lit up in a way that seemed to take her teacher aback. “How many words are we talking about? Are there some that take five? Ten? More? A whole book?!”