Soul Gem Collector 5 Chapter 2

“Taslyn!” I sat straight up, glanced quickly around the lab, and started to climb out of the huge silken bed that Noura had plopped in my lab. “Janel? Aylara?”

“Ohh, I forgot them.” Noura sat up and clutched a thick silky coverlet to her bare breasts. She tilted her head to the side as if thinking, raised one hand, and snapped her fingers three times. “They’re all at Aylara’s now.”

“They are?” I slid my hand into my pocket, then realized that none of my clothes had come along with me except for my leather jacket. I had all of my soul gems in my jacket, as well as my magic mirrors and my toolkit, so at least I had everything that was crucial to me. I was a little annoyed that I’d left behind my sturdy black trousers and my perfectly worn-in leather boots, though. I swung my legs over the bed, grabbed my fancy engraved magic mirror that the Leronds had given me, and flipped the mirror open to reveal a background of falling leaves. “Are you sure? Why did you teleport us back here anyway?”

“I thought I picked up the desire to be in your own space for the afterglow.” Noura threw aside the purple silken coverlet and bounced to her feet. She’d changed out her spangled, skimpy lingerie for a silky midnight-blue bathrobe. “Or was that just my imagination? I felt like being ‘at home,’ but I haven’t really had a home for the last few years. I just went with where the energy called me.”

“What, like telepathically?” I frowned. “Yeah, that’s how I felt. How did you pick it up? Do you have telepathic powers I don’t know about?”

“I suppose I might have a touch of--” Noura began, but she was cut off by the gentle chimes that came from my mirror.

“I’ll take the message!” I barked at my magic mirror.

The falling leaves pattern of the magic mirror was replaced with the gathered faces of Taslyn. Janel, and Aylara. Each girl was dressed in a silky robe that was nearly identical to Noura's except for the color; Taslyn wore her customary black, Janel wore deep green, and Aylara wore pink. The girls looked mildly surprised instead of furious, at least.

“Where are you, Zayre?” Janel asked first, and her eyes were filled with concern. “Are you safe?”

“Noura got us right back into the lab,” I explained. I angled the mirror to show off the familiar furnaces of the lab. “We’re both fine.”

“Why did we leave in the first place?” Taslyn’s amber eyes squinted at me in confusion. “Were things getting dangerous?”

“And why did you drop everyone at my place?” Aylara complained. “I only have a bed and a love seat. Someone’s going to have to sleep on the floor, and it ain’t me.”

“I’ll provide another bed for the evening.” Noura snapped her fingers. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know where Taslyn slept, and I thought Janel’s roommate might suspect something if three people just appeared in her dorm out of nowhere.”

“We do attend a magical school, darling,” Janel reminded her. “But I appreciate the thoughtfulness.”

“You gave the girls back their things, right?” I asked Noura. “Taslyn needs her notebook, even if you can make everyone new clothes.”

“Yes, I nabbed your things along with you all,” Noura said into the mirror. She pressed her cheek to me and smiled at the girls. “I’m afraid I wasn’t able to fold them, so they may be a bit strewn about the place. I was, er, a tad distracted.”

“They’re fine.” Taslyn’s eyes flicked from my face to Noura’s and back again. “The Iron Dwarves didn’t find us, did they? I was a little distracted myself.”

“No, no, no Iron Dwarves,” I assured the girls as I slid my arm around Noura’s shoulder. “We just decided to end the evening nice and safe with everyone back in the city.”

“Rather quickly, I see,” Taslyn smirked. “Really, what was the situation? A bear?”

“I know you know, but you’re going to make me say it, aren't you?” I groaned.

“I’m afraid I caught a little of Zayre’s unconscious desires without meaning to,” Noura shrugged. “But I think it was much safer to get us out of the mountains before anyone did find us. “And you must admit that being safe at home to sleep is much better than sleeping outside in the wilderness or slumped over in a stuffy carriage.”

“I rather enjoy sleeping under the stars in the wilderness,” Janel sighed. “Out there with no city lights, you can really see all the constellations.”

“We’ll have to take a trip out there later,” I said to Janel. “But for now, we’re home safe and we have an alibi.”

“So we’re having a sleepover!” Aylara clapped her hands together, and her eyes flicked upward. “Yep, Ameechi’s is still open. Ladies, think about what kind of booze you want and what you want on your pitza, we’re ordering in.”

“Ooh, pitza…” My stomach rumbled a little as I thought about the crispy flatbread topped with flavorful cheese and olive oil. I knew that my ladies were safe and weren’t worried about me, so now I could drift back into my drowsing with Noura. I blew three individual kisses to the mirror, and grinned as my ladies giggled. “Enjoy the slumber party, ladies. I love you all and I’ll see you soon.”

I snapped the mirror closed and turned back around to see Noura’s crestfallen face.

“I’m so sorry!” the djinn burst out. She covered her lovely face with her hands, and her black eyes gleamed out at me through flaming fingers while a single bead of flame rolled down the side of her cheek. “I just teleported us wherever I felt like and I didn’t even wait for you to say the word! And I left my new sisters behind, and they could have di-i-iiiied…”

Noura started to sob. Her flaming tears rolled off her cheeks like falling lava, puddled out into blue fire like a drop of aqua vitae on a hot pan, and sizzled out on the brick floor. The djinn had control of her own body’s temperature, but clearly not over the temperature of her tears.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right.” I touched Noura’s cheek, felt intense heat, and jerked my hand back from the searing flame. I decided to inch around and rub her back instead. “They were safe, and you got them back right away. Plus, it’s good that you’re taking initiative. I’m sure everyone is looking forward to sleeping on a flat surface tonight.”

“Then you don’t mind that I didn’t wait for your order?” Noura twisted her head around and blinked flames out of her black eyes.

“I didn’t mind all the times you did it before.” I pressed my face into Noura’s neck, but the radiant heat on my face told me that she wasn’t quite done with her tears yet. “Just remember everyone next time you do that.”

“I’ll never leave my sisters behind again.” Noura sniffled, but the heat from her tears faded. “And I’ll send Aylara a couple of extra beds for the night.”

“See?” I slid my lips toward Noura's cheek very slowly and carefully. I wasn’t really sure if Noura’s mood swings were a djinn thing, or if it was a result of being enslaved for so long, but either way I was pretty sure she hadn’t made any mistakes worth breaking out into tears over. “No harm, no foul. The girls are fine. We all had a nice night. Let’s go to sleep and deal with whatever comes in the morning, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t mind some sleep.” Noura settled back into my arms, then glanced down at the bed. “This nice soft bed will be all right for the night, won’t it? Unless you’re expecting someone to come by and perform an inspection in the morning.”

“It’s perfect for tonight,” I yawned. “We’re going to have to figure out something else for you in the morning, though. We can’t fancy up the place too much, but I don’t think you want to sleep on a straw pad until the wedding.”

“You don’t need to either.” Noura playfully bopped me on the nose, then pointed at a couple of old wooden cupboards at the back of the lab. “Is there anything in those?”

“Uh, those were Professor Raphoon’s…” I vaguely remembered Professor Raphoon stomping out with her furry ears quivering and her long, furry tail thrashing back and forth beneath her kilt. “She took her stuff and moved back down south to Boiahame. Or said she was going to, anyway. They should be empty, why?”

“Just because you keep a straw pallet in front of the furnace doesn’t mean you need to sleep on it.” Noura snuggled back into my arms, squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds, then slid her hand over my eyes.  Surprisingly, the light from her hand didn’t bleed through my eyelids the way that even a candle flame could. The djinn hummed for a second, and then the gentle pressure from her hand left my face. “Now open your eyes.”

I opened my eyes.

The room was circular, about three stories high, and painted a soft sandy white. White stone steps spiraled up the interior and led up to a skylight at the very top, where shafts of star-shaped sunlight lanced down from a brass grate. Little star-shaped windows with ruby-studded bronze lattices followed the stairs up the wall. Even though sunlight streamed in from the ceiling, the windows all looked out on perfect blackness.

“What is this?” I sat up just as sheer red curtains fell around the bed. I caught a glimpse of an ornate bronze wardrobe as the fabric descended around the bed, but as I followed the line of the furniture with my eyes I realized that it was melting down into a shiny blob. I was pretty sure Noura hadn’t just heated it up to melting point, especially because it wasn’t glowing red, so I presumed that she was changing its shape into something else. I decided I’d wait to see the result until Noura was ready, then turned back to the djinn. “Where are we?”

“It’s my old bedroom,” Noura explained, and she waved a hand at the under-furnished surroundings. “Well, a copy of some of it. It doesn’t have my oil paintings or knick-knacks up there, and I’m rearranging a few of my things into something a little more fun, but this is where I slept for quite a lot of my life.”

“And I’m guessing that we’re in the cupboard you asked about?” I pointed at the darkened windows, then at the brilliant skylight up above. “And is that an artificial sun?”

“Yes, and yes!” Noura sat up in the bed and clapped her hands together with glee. “You’ve got it. I would use the artificial sun to paint. I can shut it off, of course…”

“I’m wondering how you fit all of this into a cupboard.” I blinked as the red curtains rose to reveal an interior draped with red and purple silks, bronze censers that wafted sweet sandalwood smoke into the room, and ornate bronze tables that held large and small bottles of all shapes and colors. I noticed a bronze door with stars worked into the metallic lattice off to the side of my field of vision, and presumed that it was the exit to the laboratory.

“The large ones are liquor, the small ones are scented oils,” Noura pointed out. She sank back into the bed and lolled among the purple pillows and orange silk coverlet as more silk scarves hung themselves all the way up the walls. “I just made the cupboard a little bigger on the inside. Janel’s traveling trunk works the same way.”

“So we’re not tiny?” I yawned again. The sweet-smelling smoke and the languorous warmth of the bed was making me very ready to slip into dreamland. I slid my arms around Noura and nestled back into her warmth.

“No, we’re not tiny.” Noura patted me on the back a couple of times, and then her hand went slowly limp as her breathing deepened.

The artificial sunlight dimmed to nothingness, but the rubies in the windows let out a gentle glow, and soon I fell asleep under their soothing incarnadine light.

I woke in a beam of sunlight as the smell of strong beanbrew wafted under my nose.

“Good morning!” A beautiful, naked Noura flung the red curtain aside. She held an ornate bronze tray laden with bowls of steaming shakshouka, chunks of crusty bread, and little bronze cups of strong, foaming beanbrew. The djinn girl set the tray down a few inches above her side of the bed, where it hovered, and then started to climb onto the bed toward me. She moved like hot oil as she slid her lips, hands, and breasts over my silk-covered body, and my body shuddered with pleasure as she pressed a kiss to my lips. “Did you sleep well, master?”

“Did I ever.” I slid my arms around Noura’s body and started to kiss her throat.

“Good!” Noura giggled, then sat up. She tore off a chunk of bread, dipped some into the shakshouka, and held out the mix of tomato sauce and perfectly poached egg to me. “Because Taslyn is here, and she wants to practice. Eat your breakfast and drink your coffee.”

“How does everyone get up before me?” I mused as I tucked into the egg-tomato dish.

“Maybe it’s because you’re so cute when you sleep.” Noura patted my cheek and ran her hand through my hair, then slid off of the bed and stretched out. Her naked curves bloomed with white linen trimmed in triangles of blue and orange, her fiery skin darkened to mahogany brown, and her flaming locks darkened and coiled into a glorious waterfall of hair. She may have looked like the kind of Diaflorian maiden normally found frescoed on restaurant walls, but she couldn’t hide the brilliance of her eyes and her smile.

“This is amazing,” I told Noura. I washed the bite of shakshouka down with a sip of the beanbrew. Once my tongue tasted the thick, grainy coffee with its sweet fruity under-taste, I understood why Noura had offered it up in such a small cup. I could feel my brain speeding up before the first sip had even made its way down into my stomach.

“I don’t want to keep Taslyn waiting too long, so I hope you don’t mind if I take a few liberties,” Noura said. She held her hand in front of her face, started to wiggle her fingers at me, and then drew her hand slowly down over her body.

My hair and skin suddenly felt moist and freshly scrubbed. A new pair of woolen trousers wove themselves into existence around my legs as a crisp linen shirt buttoned itself up over my chest, and soft, shiny leather boots formed around my feet.

I finished breakfast, kissed Noura in thanks, and then followed her through the elaborate bronze door and into the lab.

“There you are.” Taslyn waved at me as she sipped beanbrew from a bronze cup. Her wicker basket sat on her left and the remains of a bronze bowl of shakshouka sat on her right. “I suppose I won’t need to bring you beanbrew in the morning anymore, will I?”

“Well, of course I’m going to make breakfast for everyone!” Noura smiled at Taslyn and clapped her hands together. “It’s easier for me than for any of you.”

“Hi, Tas!” I pressed a kiss to Taslyn’s mouth and tasted spiced beanbrew on her lips. “No sleeping in for you, huh?”

“I woke up a half hour later than usual, actually.” Taslyn patted me on the cheek, then gave a solemn little nod to Noura. “Thank you for breakfast, sister. What did you put in that beanbrew?”

“Just cardamom,” Noura shrugged. “And a little clove to sweeten the breath.”

“So, practice.” I turned to Taslyn. “Let me guess. You can’t wait to see how that bugbear ruby works?”

“Exactly,” Taslyn breathed. Her amber eyes gleamed keenly in the mellow sunlight that tumbled like pale silk through the open window next to her. “Can I see it, while we’re still safe inside?”

“Sure.” I grabbed my leather jacket off of the workbench chair, shrugged it onto my shoulders, and felt for the leather sack that contained all of my magical gems. When I found it, I teased open the drawstring with my fingers, fished through the stones, and held up a smallish ruby shaped like a chevron arrow to the light. I’d captured the soul of a half-mosquito, half-bear with this gem, and I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to try it out, although I’d figured out by now that a soul captured in a ruby gem usually produced some pretty strong offensive magic.

Soft brown magic clung in gleaming lumps to the interior walls of the ruby like dirt while oily black magic sloshed down its inclines. Magic usually sparkled like a pile of gold dust, but this magic sparkled like sunlight on water. The bugbear’s magic reflected light, but it had its own interior darkness.

“Vampiric magic,” Taslyn breathed, and she followed the eddying of the black magic with her fingertip.

“Did we kill a vampire bugbear?” Noura’s brown eyes went wide.

“It would have sucked our blood if we’d caught it,” I said, “but that’s just because it was a mosquito. Not all blood-suckers are vampires, and not all vampires are blood-suckers. Professor Winestock says that the one common point all vampires have is that they consume magical energy--”

“We certainly can’t take the gem to Winestock.” Taslyn tapped the gem. “He might have been human once, but he’s still a professor, and he’s going to have to report you for using forbidden magic whether he likes it or not.”

“Well, are mosquitoes magical?” Noura asked.

“Everything has a magical use,” Taslyn said.

“But mosquitoes themselves aren’t magical creatures,” I said. I slid the gem into my trouser pocket, where I could feel it separately from the rest of the gems in my jacket, and headed outside. “They’re just little flies that suck your blood and make you itch. The bugbear is a magical creature that can manipulate magical energy by instinct.”

“Perhaps the mosquito part is magical in the bugbear,” Taslyn suggested as we all headed out onto the wide strip of grass that surrounded the alchemy lab before the treeline started. “The bugbear might well use its proboscis to feed on energy as well as blood.”

“Best explanation I can think of,” I shrugged. I stretched my arms and raised my face to the soft morning sunlight. “Janel would probably know more about bugbears. Is she even coming back to campus today?”

“She ought to be here any minute,” Taslyn said as she glanced into the sound-deadening thicket of trees that separated the alchemy lab from the rest of the campus. “We might have had a bit of a night, but I’m sure she’s an experienced partier.”

“You just left her behind to wander through the city alone?” Noura frowned at Taslyn, then raised one hand in a snapping-finger gesture. “Do I need to get her?”

“Janel has her own private carriage, remember?” Taslyn gently placed a hand on Noura’s arm and lowered it a little. “Anyway, she told me to leave her alone and stop trying to get her to take a hangover tonic, so I did. I think she might be annoyed if you fetched her before she’s ready.”

“Let Janel sleep in,” I advised Noura as I strode out to the middle of the lawn. “She’ll be fine. The city honestly isn’t that dangerous.”

“Any place is dangerous if you have a family like the Korlems looking for you,” Noura pointed out.

“They have no idea about any of this,” I reminded Noura. I pulled my silver magic mirror out of my pocket and flipped it open. “But I’ll call and check on her if it will make you feel better.”

“It really would.” Noura clasped her fingers together.

“Call Janel Lerond, please,” I said to the mirror.

The mirror’s pattern of falling leaves changed to a slightly different background of falling leaves, and then tilted downward to show Janel’s face.

“I’ll be there in a minute, darling.” Janel’s jade-green eyes were covered with huge smoked glasses, and her head was swathed in a gray woolen hood. Wisps of black hair straggled out around her gorgeous brown face, while tendrils of steam rose from the bottom of the screen. “I only just got back to campus.”

“No need to hurry,” I said. “We’re just testing out the new… you know.”

“I thought you might be,” Janel said, and then she raised a paper cup of beanbrew to her lips and slurped at it. “I want to see how it works.”

“Show Noura that you’re alive and well?” I asked. I turned the mirror to face Noura and Taslyn.

“I just worried about a woman walking alone in the city,” Noura explained. She waved at Janel. “I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

“It’s not as though I’m lingering in alleyways with my rubies out.” Janel glanced behind her, then returned to the mirror. “I was going to drive Taslyn, but she insisted on walking all the way to campus.”

“The fresh air and tonic cleared my head,” Taslyn said, and she waved at Janel. “We’ll see you when you get here.”

“I’m here.” Janel stepped out of the woods about ten yards away from us and waved, then flipped her mirror closed. She was wearing a hooded gray lace-up tunic with long, wide sleeves and her tweed hunting pants, and she gripped a huge paper cup of beanbrew that had a split-tailed mermaid logo printed on it. She’d clearly stopped at the Sign of the Mermaid for their strong, sugary beanbrew instead of the dining hall. “I told you I would be there in a minute, didn’t I?”

“Uh-oh, did someone have a little too much fun last night?” I teased as I approached Janel for a kiss.

“I didn’t think the drinks were that strong!” Janel protested. She slid up her dark glasses as I approached, and I saw that she had dark circles under her eyes. Her lips felt dry and sticky from the smeared lipstick, and she licked her lips after we pulled away. “Aylara makes them taste like candy.”

“Did you have breakfast?” Noura asked, and then she twisted her hands together like she was nervous, but almost immediately opened her hands to reveal a red checkered scarf. The djinn yanked on each end of the scarf, and with each tug the scarf grew longer. “I can set up a picnic!”

“Please, no.” Janel shook her head and wrinkled her nose. “I can’t look the idea of food in the eye right now. Taslyn tried to feed me some kind of juice earlier and I nearly lost my lights.”

“It was hangover potion,” Taslyn said. She drew her leather-bound notebook out of her long black cloak and opened it. “Not breakfast. If you’d tried some, you’d be feeling fine by now. Unfortunately, the egg whites will have denatured by now and it won’t work.”

“You just shoved it under my nose without telling me what it was and told me to drink it.” Janel went to sit down on a clump of soft moss. Before the half-elf’s pert buttocks hit the moss, Noura whipped the red-and-white checked cloth she’d been holding out over the grass. Janel sat on the suddenly spread-out blanket, glanced down, then returned her paper cup to her lovely lips, and slurped at her beanbrew. “Don’t hold back on my account. I’m quite anxious to find out what this new bugbear stone does.”

“I’m right with you.” Taslyn flounced down on the blanket next to Janel, licked the tip of her pencil, and pulled up the black hood of her cloak over her ginger locks.

“Well, let’s check this sucker out.” I strode out to the middle of the moss-covered lawn, cracked my knuckles, and patted the chevron-shaped stone in my pocket. “Brown or black magic first?”

“Let’s try the brown first,” Taslyn said. “Vampiric magic can be energetically draining. If one of us needs to be revived, I’d rather it come toward the end of the session.”

“There’s no chance that one of us might actually--” Noura bit her fingertip. “No. I trust that you know what you’re doing.”

“Only kind of!” I gave Noura the most cheerful grin I could muster and a big thumbs-up, pulled the ruby from my trousers pocket, and held my other hand palm-out toward the woods. “Watch closely, ladies. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

As I held the ruby up to the warm morning sunlight, I watched the gleaming black oil slosh around the bits of softly glowing earth magic stuck to the inside of the bright red gem. I focused on one of the little brown chunks just under the tip of the chevron, rubbed my thumb over the chunk in a clockwise motion, and reached out toward it with my mind. I imagined the piece of magic breaking up into little brown magic particles and flowing out of the stone to work their magic upon the world.

The chunk of gleaming brown magic started to sparkle. Its outline grew blurrier and blurrier until it dissolved in a cloud of little bronze sparkle. The sparks of magic spread apart into a cloud that looked for all the world like shiny little gnats, or flies, or even mosquitoes.

“It’s beautiful,” Noura whispered, and her brown eyes were wide. “Pure, raw magic. Taslyn, are your seer eyes seeing this?”

“It’s always an interesting sight,” Taslyn agreed as the black pupils in her amber eyes grew wide.

The swarm of magicsquitoes started to rotate slowly clockwise, but they sped up quickly, and their path began to slant upward. They arrayed themselves in loosely aligned lines that turned into arms like a galaxy as they spiraled up into the blue sky. After a few seconds of whirling, they shot off in every direction over the leafy purple and red tops of the trees.

“What are you two seeing?” I asked as I tried to reach out and feel for the magic that had fled. I knew the brown magic must be doing something, but I had no idea what it was yet. I could feel the sparks of magic flying to and fro like a cloud of confused mosquitoes, though.

“It’s like watching a trail of ice crystals travel up a frozen glass,” Noura said. “But they’re like rainbows, and they travel in all directions at the same time.”

“To me, it looks like lodestones flying through colored wisps of iron dust,” Taslyn said. “Each color reacts differently to the lodestone. Some move away, some toward, some spin in place, and it all ends up mixing up together and creating new patterns as they move.”

“Sounds like a bad migraine to me,” Janel muttered. “Noura, could I trouble--”

“Coming up.” Noura snapped her fingers once, and a huge glass bottle of bubbly water appeared in front of Janel. “Start with that and let me know when you’re hungry.”

“It’s a great hangover cure, trust me,” I told Janel. I peered up at the trees and tried to figure out what the magic was doing. I could feel the sparks slowly collecting themselves together again as they traveled back toward us, but I had no idea what kind of effect they were bringing.

“Does anyone hear that?” Taslyn pushed her hood back from her head. Her pointed red ears stood straight up in the air and swiveled around like antennae. “It’s like a hum.”

“My ears have been ringing ever since I got up,” Janel muttered. She wrapped her wine-red lips around the neck of the glass bottle, raised it up high, and started to chug down the water in huge gulps.

“No, not that.” Taslyn shook her head. “It sounds almost like bees. Quite a lot of them, in fact.”

“A lot of bees?” I cocked an ear to the sky and listened. I could hear the dull roar of a distant hum, and the hum got higher as it got louder. I could feel the magic all spiraling back towards us, and I had a bad feeling about what it was bringing. I tried to push the magic away or slow it down, but I couldn’t get a mental hold on the flying, chaotic sparks this time. I had no control over the raw magic I’d just unleashed, and I had a sinking feeling that it was bringing something unpleasant with it.

As the bugbear’s earth magic tightened back into a glittering spiral over our heads, little black specks started to zip back and forth in the sky above us. The hum grew even louder as dark wisps of particulate matter floated over the treetops and darkened the face of the rising sun.

“Oh, that does not look good,” Janel groaned.

I could feel the magic coalescing back into a whirlwind over us as the cloud of insects grew darker. I raised my free hand, held up palm-up to the sun, and tried to will the magic into staying up above us in a rotating disc. Even as I pushed back the thickening mass of bugs, I could feel little pinpricks start to sting my face and neck. I tried to concentrate on the magic, but the intense itching that started to flood over my skin didn’t help my focus at all.

I had summoned a huge cloud of magical mosquitoes, and I had no idea how long I could hold them back.