The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Two

“This is what you think I need, just to clarify,” I said.

“Correct,” Oberon inclined his head. “I want you as a companion. I know you’re married, but such things are trivial. Three nights of companionship as such things are measured here in the Meeting Place, and then you’ll be able to go your own way.” 

“Why, so that you can take my power like you do with everyone else?” I asked. “I’ve a better idea.” 

Oberon’s eyes flashed, and thunder rolled in the distance for a second. I realized that may have sounded a lot more judgmental than I’d intended. 

Whoops. 

I played my best card. I’d seen Faeries give and take power before. It happened all the time, with boons, and I’d even once – temporarily – taken as much power from the Silver Queen as I could handle.

But since the Faerie Aura was, well, fully faerie… Why not do that in reverse?

This wouldn’t have been an option before my auras split. I had one aura, without any clear delineation. Like a bucket of red paint pouring into a blue bucket to purple, you couldn’t simply make the bucket blue again, even if you stopped the flow of red, as Medb had for some time. There was still red already mixed into the blue.

My arch-star had. I had a bucket of blue human and a bucket of red faerie.

I thought – thought – that I could pull a trick not unlike the Silver Queen’s, but in reverse. Sell my power to another, and stop the weight of my red bucket from ever exceeding the weight of the blue.

“I’ll give you a tenth of the power I have now,” I said. “And you’ll also receive any power that reaches beyond the limits of the lord stage of faerie magic – ritual, shaping, all of it. There will be no companionship, merely a deal where I pay you for the rest of my mortal life for this current information.”

I paused, then added a bit more.

“Given how much power I should be generating within the next half-year, I think that this offer is generous. So generous, in fact, that I’m overpaying, so I insist that you agree not to use the power against those I consider my friends and family.”

While I could, perhaps, push it and say that he would consume any power over the basics of the king stage, that would be a lot more nebulous. Archmage and King seemed to be roughly on par, but there was a lot more wiggle room among the Fae than among humans, and kings seemed to scale far, far more quickly than archmages.

I could have tried to argue that he kept anything that approached too closely to the human level of power, but I suspected that would go poorly. Maybe I was wrong, and I could have argued for it, but I felt like the ancient faerie kind would find a slip in my wording that could be exploited.

Being too greedy could deal a lot more harm. If he did trick me, I’d be left as a faerie king unable to grow any further, and I’d have to return to Oberon in order to remove the siphon of power. 

I had no illusions Oberon’s prices for those services would be cheap.

Besides, I still had room to grow within the lord stage. Lord spells cast as non-rituals were an entire field I’d barely scratched. I’d still be gaining, even if I was overzealous with how much power I gave to him.

Oberon stared at me for a long moment, his face a mask that I was unable to read. 

Then he started to laugh. Spring rainstorms began to lash around the room, drenching me in water, and then the clouds overhead parted, sunshine sweeping through the room, bright, clear, and warm. Blood and tears rolled in equal unison from Oberon’s cheeks as he cried with mirth, and his entire body shook with the force of his laughter. 

“My, you are simply precious! If I maintained a proper court, I’d want you in it, precocious little half-elf that you are!”

I kept my face still, but I thought he may have actually accidentally – or perhaps on purpose – let slip another bit of information. 

“That’s not a confirmation,” I said flatly. 

“One provision,” Oberon said, extending his hand. “As payment for what I think you need to know, I’ll mark you with a power siphon that feeds the aura that I’m going to take, and swear to not use your power against any mortals that you consider friends or family. Non mortals, like Garnet, King of Constellations, will have to fend for themselves.” 

“So long as you don’t set it up in such a manner that the consequences for your actions fall to me, rather than to you or someone else, deal,” I said. 

“Let it be done,” Oberon said, and we shook. Once we finished, Oberon lit his aura and leaned back. 

“Originally, I had planned to show you an aura manipulation exercise that could reinforce the boundary between your split auras. It’s been used before to allow someone to be near-archmage in two disciplines.” 

“I’m not the first person with this arch-star?” I asked. 

“You’re the first to manage a completely inhuman aura and rip apart what should have very much been one whole,” Oberon said. “The exact shape of your star seems unique. But I’ve seen similar phenomena before – a witch who’s pinnacle arch-star allowed her to shave away a portion of her aura into a second, separate layer, and imbued that second aura with a rune bond for Duende.” 

“For what?” I asked. 

“Unimportant,” he said. “But given the nature of our deal, that information would be rather… Worthless to you. I’m going to teach it to you anyways, and I’ll also tell you that the dream is mostly correct. The rules are… flexible… during the complete transformation process. I don’t know if that’s what you’d look like, not for sure, but the content is there.”

His teeth flashed in a smile, and they were no longer human, but sharklike, or like an Aster’s. 

“Had you failed to prevent the power buildup in some regard… Well, let’s just say, you absolutely would have locked away your husband and friend in your castle in the Fae Sovereignties. The process of transforming someone against their will, without a lifespark – or aura spark, as you call them – is hard, but you’ll figure it out. Here are a few of the details…”

I narrowed my eyes, tempted to press for more useful information, even as Oberon enumerated the best methods of transforming someone against their will. 

I was handing over a lot of potential power, as Oberon had admitted. He was practically taunting me with that fact even now, and that for all the power, he still got to snub me. 

But we still had one more deal to make. It was probably unwise to push him too hard now, and it wasn’t like I’d gotten nothing out of the arrangement. After all, if I pushed, he could argue that he was actually doing me the favor, rather than the reverse. 

So I listened through his lecture on the principles of transforming someone, and then practiced the aura manipulation exercises. While I might not get much use out of them, I did plan to put the information about this arch-star out there for public knowledge, and someone else would hopefully eventually form it. They’d need these techniques then, so I did my best. Once we were finally done with those, Oberon produced a thin book. 

“This is the third and final bit of information that I think you need,” he said. “There are three spells within, spells I borrowed and then copied from one of my ex-husbands. He was a Lord of Change, but he focused on a rather different field than that of your dearest Silver Queen. You’ve cast light veils by changing the light, but he changed what people saw.” 

“For clarity, do I own the book? Or only the information within?” 

A smile spread over Oberon’s face. 

“You own the contents.”

I nodded and did something that felt very, very wrong. I grabbed the delicate cover of the book and its silvery pages, and tore them out, then handed the cover back to Oberon.

“There. I have taken the contents, and this deal is concluded with no debts.” 

Oberon scowled, but nodded in recognition.

“Very well,” he said. “Our last deal, then?” 

“Make your offer,” I agreed.

“I’m going to offer you an item,” he said. “Made by a now defunct court known as… I suppose the translation would be the court of flesh-mage carving?” 

He let out a frustrated sigh. 

“The translation works poorly in your language. Regardless, the point is that you feed in it your faerie aura and your blood over thirty days, and then you can make changes. It’s a powerful and rare artifact, you won’t see one like it again. Indeed, when I destroyed the court and took their greatest treasures, there were only two in the vaults.” 

A warped smile spread over his face. 

“The slippery little eels used it to hide from me for so long. Change their face, change the color of their aura, change their bodies. They hid for a long time, but I got them all in the end. Now, I want –” 

“I’ll offer you thirty years of my lifeline,” I said. 

“Ninety-nine years, and it’s a deal,” Oberon said. “A mortal life for a mortal life.” 

I sucked in a breath at that.

If I was right in my guess that my lifeline had been changed by the power I’d taken in, then I might have the lifespan of an elf, three to five hundred years. Maybe an aster’s two hundred.

Oberon’s comment of calling me a half-elf might be suggesting that I’d fall somewhere in the two-hundred range. Half elves didn’t exist, not biologically, though. It could have been a trick, a way to get me to hand over my entire life. 

If that was the case, then I’d die, here and now. And it would be a great trick on Oberon’s part, to give me everything and take everything.

While I died, he’d no doubt make me a great offer to turn me into sparks in exchange for helping Tara and Osheen and Liam. 

But at the same time… I had felt my lifeline mix with faerie magic. I was confident that mixing had lengthened my lifespan.

Even if I didn’t get a full two hundred years, only a hundred and fifty, dying at fifty wouldn’t be the worst. 

“I am willing to consider it, I merely need clarification,” I said, and then continued when Oberon tipped his head in acknowledgement. “As long as you can assure me that I’ll live long enough to complete my work and see my wedding… I agree to hand over ninety-nine years.”

Oberon nodded and extended his hand. 

“You should live more than long enough to do both of those, as long as you don’t put them off indefinitely and aren’t killed by chance or violence,” he said. 

I shook his hand, and I felt his power flare. A single king, dozen lords, and twenty maestro all stood before me at once, and they wove together a single spell of such magnificent complexity that it staggered the mind, and I felt it connect to my lifeline.

That sensation was getting altogether too normal for me to be comfortable with. 

The spell scoured along my lifeline, cutting and pruning at it like removing the branches from a tree, and for just a second, I saw Oberon holding a silver-green sphere of power, before it vanished.

“Get the last,” Oberon said, and I was suddenly in the hall, my mind spinning wildly. I turned to Seth and mumbled something about it being his turn before I collapsed into Osheen’s arms. He hugged me closely.

“How did it go?” he asked. 

“Good?” I said, half a question. “I don’t think I’m going to live past sixty? Maybe ninety? It’s hard to tell, people aren’t really meant to sense that. Besides it’s all estimations of health anyways. I could get hit by a train falling from the sky and die tomorrow.” 

“You’re babbling,” Osheen said, sounding concerned, and I waved him off. I shoved the papers I’d ripped from Oberon’s book into my bag, then took a breath to steady myself before glancing around the hall. 

It was just Tara, Oracle, Bridgette, and Osheen now, though… 

I leaned in to look at Oracle. 

“Your face looks more human. And did you get bigger?” 

He let out a loud, happy hoot of agreement, then stuck his band out, the one I’d enchanted to keep him in this realm, then sent me a very clear psychic message that he was too strong to stay all the time with just this now. He was a Maestro of Change Rituals! 

“Congratulations!” I told him. “And not to worry. I’ve finished most of my major enchanting. I can definitely improve that one soon.”

“Has he suffered brain damage?” Tara whispered to Osheen. “If he traded away his mental acumen, we–” 

“I’m fine,” I said, turning back to them and waving my hand through the air. “It was intense. Here, let me explain…”

So I did, going through the three deals. Osheen’s jaw locked when I described having a portion of my lifeline sucked away, before he nodded his acceptance. 

“Even if you only live to forty,” he said, “you’ll have been the love of my life.” 

I smiled and wished I had something equally romantic and sweet to say back to him, but words failed me. Instead, I just stepped forward and pulled him into a kiss.