Pepper / INK /

What Jordan found

Jordan had been sent home after a few hours. He would be back in a few more to pick up Shum and take him home. Sebastian, it seemed was worse off than his charge. He was going to be ok, but he was going to have to stay a lot longer. They could cure him, but he’d been exposed earlier in the week, and was starting to show symptoms, fortunately they were all reversible at this point.

When he came back into the house after the moon wash he could see something glowing. It was a sigil on a book. And the sigil said ’hidden.’ It must have been overpowered by the wash and broke through. The handwriting on the cover was his father’s. And tucked into the front cover was a picture of him, his mom, and his dad. It was one of the last times the three of them had been able to go anywhere together, they’d gone to the carnival.

The carnival had been a fun night, they had watched the tricks, and the feats of strength. It was interesting to see how the mortals did things. Carnivals here weren’t magic, oh, they might show a carpet or two or a good location trick, but most of them were just like the mortals had always known them, because magic wasn’t really interesting to those who always used it.

His hands shook as he held the journal. Maybe this could tell him what happened, why his father was always gone. On the first page was a single sigil. "Secret." Then there was a spell of sorts. "If you are reading this and mean me harm, may the ink I have forsworn fall upon you with vengeance, if you mean my son harm and hope to find him through this, may that vengeance be doubled. By the moon that gives us the pale light to cast with, these words within are true."

He turned the page and was surprised to see that it was addressed to him directly.

"Jordan, if you are reading this then I have to assume that I am dead or badly hurt. So I figured I would write this now. Firstly, if I have been aloof, I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to keep you out of what I was involved in. Right after your mom’s death, there was some talk about the new Special Services officer who transferred in from Cold Iron. There were some people, including the top brass who didn’t trust him.

When within a couple weeks of him being installed into his position everyone against him got ill or changed their mind, I was sent undercover by a friend of mine, the former chief who suspected that Damien is a Necromancer. And not just any Necromancer. There is talk that he is ’the Necromancer’ the one who tried to kill both the chief and the mayor. But I have yet to see him as anything but an Inkwalker. Whatever Ink he wears is foreign, the sigils are different than those on the Inkwalker that tried to help me. I am neither afraid nor do I hate the Inkwalker who marked me, though I rant that I do, it is only here that I would dare to voice the truth. That Inkwalker saved my life, and it was shortly after that I realized that I was not strong enough to carry the ink. Especially not coming from a family well known for the Dark Arts. I managed to avoid the one taboo, but I forswore my Ink to do it. I was afraid that I would slide to the dark Arts and eventually tempt the taboo.

There is something wrong with Damien. That is his true name, though he calls himself "Javved" the one who lived. There is some talk that he got your mother sick, but I don’t know. I am not even sure how he would go about that, but I do know that he is not in his right mind, and I fear his madness will rub off on me. There is something about his madness though that is not natural. It ebbs and flows with the phases of the moon, and sometimes he will stare in horror at what he, or the ink has done. I am not sure he is in control of anything. Not his Ink, and most of all, not himself. Whatever madness this is, it has twisted him into a shell of himself, and sometimes when he sleeps he calls for his brother.

I need your help. Whether I am living or dead, I am in no condition to go, and I know you will need the thing we have been seeking since you were twelve. Your Ink. Well, mine, actually. He has it. It is hidden. I found it a few weeks ago. I can tell you how to find it if you need it before I can steal it for you. If you can, you should find the Vigilante. He is no Vigilante, he is the Inkwalker, the true one. He will know what to do and how to deal with it. But trust no one except those the Inkwalker trusts. The secret name, the name he will tell no one is Inkaru. And yours is Inkeshu, he is from the east, but adapted early, so he has both eastern and western power. I may have forsworn but I can hear them. A lot of them have taken new names, more fitting to their current status, Valdis and Rehuel, and Mauro, but these are not their names. You must find their given names and remind them of who they are.

Remind them of who they were before the madness. If the ink is not silver, and does not glow under the moon, its sick. The next page has the prayer to purify them, and the items you will need to help them. Simple herbs and clean water. Moon water works best, but any water will work.

There is a place in his home, you will see two pictures that look nearly identical, turn them both so they tilt in toward the center and you will find a doorway. It will lead you to a place that will prove what I have said."

The journal rambled for a long time before coming back to coherance. "I love you Jordan, and no matter what happens you have to remember that. He wanted me to turn to the Dark Arts knowing what he did of my family, but I refused to sacrifice you for anything I wanted. I knew I couldn’t carry the Ink, the few things I had done as a teen made it hard for me, and I knew it would be a struggle, so when I was younger, in fact, shortly before I married your mom, I bound myself from being able to use the Ink. I wanted it to pass on to my heir, it was too much of a responsibility and I didn’t trust myself with it. Your friend Daniel knows I’m a seven that has been taken out of the line, but he doesn’t know why, I also didn’t want to take a chance that while I was undercover whatever madness drove Damien would also drive me to do something stupid while I carried the Ink.

There is something about him, something that makes men afraid of him. His eyes are wrong and look in them is sheer madness, but I do not know the cause. It reminded me of something I had heard of a long time ago, but the more I hang around him, the less like me I feel. I know that madness is not usually contagious, but somehow this madness is. Is it borne by sickness? Is it a derangement from something he has done? A boomerang? I don’t know, but whatever it is, it hangs around him thickly. No matter what you hear I wanted you to know the truth.

But never forget. Please, never forget that I love you."

By the moon which gives us both light and power, I swear these words to be true as I know them."

And then it was signed.

"Robert Coulton."

"More than the moon Jordan."

"More than the moon." Was how his father answered his question when he was younger "How much do you love me?" As all children asked. "More than the moon Jordan, more than the moon" was always his reply, and eventually he didn’t have to ask, his father would sign letters or end phone calls with that one phrase. And it always warmed him. But this time it made him sad, because he realized this might just be his living will.

#

Jordan knew he shouldn’t, but he felt he had to. He was the only one who knew about the room. "Shum and I can’t catch it again, right?"

"Not the strain you had, and we don’t believe you are capable of catching the older one either." The doctor said as she signed both of their release papers. "Your parents are both still here?"

"We’ll be ok for a few hours, My father’s a police officer, if I need help I can ask anyone from the police department."

She nodded. Magic users were free to come and go as soon as they could cast. It really did little good to ground a kid who could just Locate away, and it was hard to take that ability without hurting someone. The sigils to ward against it were one use so most people forgot to put them back up and as a result people had a hard time controlling the kids. Most of them weren’t out for trouble, they were just bored and so they would random locate, or they would play games like ’locate me’ which was their version of hide and seek.

And considering that Shum wore the robes of a Lunar of a pretty influential family, no one really wanted to annoy him. After all, there were rumors, and the threads of his robe bore them out, that his mother was Inkwalker, and while an Inkwalker couldn’t judge for an affront like that, it didn’t help any.

It didn’t take long to get to Javved’s place. Over all, it seemed like a normal house except it was dark. Not dark as in devoid of light, but devoid of magic, as if the little magic there were just a skeleton of what it should be. It felt like a haunted graveyard on Hallow’s eve. As if it had been closed up for too many years and not only were the plants dead, but all the magic and memories too until there was nothing left but dissatisfied ghosts of what should have been.

The door wasn’t locked. It really didn’t surprise him. Necromancers tended to forget about simple things striving for the complex. They would put a spell to raise the dead as protection and forget to lock the door.

Jordan read the journal as they walked and the place they looked for was easy to find. It was one one side of the long hall way just before it turned left into the front room, there were two pictures of him, pictures that, as the journal said, were nearly identical. When they were both turned inward, the wall glowed with a blue light and the wall between the portraits became gauzy as if it were not really there. Portals were rare. They usually took a lot of power, more power than he would have thought that they had.

They stepped through to find a small room. But it was Jordan who knew what it was. There were bottles of Ink, a dozen or more, and a small basin in the moonlight. But just walking into the area he knew something was wrong. The bottles no longer glowed the bright blue-white. This was Inkwalker Ink, it was supposed to be anyway. But it was wrong. There was something tainting it.

"Sinar Bulan, Mehtap," He read the words as easily as if they were what they spoke now. Then came "Ataru," All of them had dates behind them. 月光, That one gave him trouble for a bit. "Yuèguāng, แสงจันทร์, (S̄ængcạnthr̒) चांदनी, (Cāndanī) 달빛, (dalbich)" These are moon inks, written in the language they identify. There are a couple more, But I’m looking for a specific one."

"Can you hear them?" Shum asked. "There is something wrong, very wrong."

"They are Sick, just like we were. Fortunately, our blood can teach them how to heal themselves since we have the antibodies."

"Inkeshu," He said pulling the bottle down. "This is it. It must be from the south, I wonder if he knew Inkaru." The ink inside barely glowed and sloshed listlessly.

"Dad wrote down the purification ritual in case we found the Ink. He knew it was here, he just never had a chance to get it." He smiled at his new friend and looked worriedly down at the Ink he had poured into the basin. In the moonlight it should be blue-white, but instead it was quicksilver, it was sick. He thought about it a moment. "Shum, get me this list of items." He scrawled them on a nearby piece of paper, and then busied himself finding moon crystals to set up around the room.

Like all alchemists, he had two pantries, one for food and one for spices and ingredients for alchemy. And so it was an easy thing to find the half-dozen aromatic spices. Just opening the jars to pour them out made the room smell and feel better, as if it made the air brighter already.

Shum did, not really sure what his new friend was doing but curious none-the-less. He brought back the items, and Jordan stood and thought for a second. He had read the books his father kept in the locked drawer of his desk, books about Ink, and that said when the Ink looked like this it was sick. And that certain herbs together with prayers could help.

Jordan put both hands together and cast a gathering spell. Then he opened the moon refractors until the whole thing glowed bright blue white, nearly too hard to look at. Two of the items were Ground and added straight to the ink in the bowl. Some of the others were placed right in front. And then Jordan pulled a knife and cut his finger. "This is where we hope I did it right. And if I did, we can do a gathering spell and purify all the inks at once. But I have to make sure we did this right."

He made the prayers, seven times as required, the first three times he thought maybe he had done something wrong, but the fourth, the ink began to move, it rose up in a wave over the edge of the bowl, absorbing the elements and changing color with each one. After the sixth one, it slunk back into the bowl and after the seventh it was the right color again, and slithered out of the bowl and on to Jordan. It felt like ice and fire both, cold and hot writhing and moving as the sigils and figures appeared. He felt stronger, older, calmer.

He turned and Shum, never one to speak out loud, cursed in surprise.

Jordan smiled. "I’ll have to take one of the tattoos but I can do that later, he’s consented to stay with me until then. Come here and I will show you how to purify yours so you can wear it. Firstly, you’re gonna have to point out your mom’s Ink, I don’t know it on sight."

Shum pointed. They repeated the process for his ink, but with one big difference. It was spoken entirely in sign. Shum didn’t feel right using the little bit of ink he had to do this, so he used the voice he most often used, his hands.

When he too was inked together they sang the song of the moonlight and gathered as much as they could, bathing the entire room in moon magic. They dumped the inks together, not very common, but it would allow all of them to get the moonlight at the same time, then they dipped the bottles in a solution of herbs and purified water, the same mixture that allowed an Inkwalker to take off his or her ink. With the prayers repeated seven times, the inks were now in their right bottles, and glowing dimly in the moonlight. They were the right color, but would need many hours to recharge before they were healed.

When they left the house, it was with crescent moon pieces of Lunar quartz around their necks, charged with as much moonlight as the two of them could gather so that the ink would not have to rely only on their fragile bodies. They also carried another one this one for Daniel.

They stopped back by the hospital to visit the others, but the nurses would not let them in. They did promise to give Daniel or Max the pendant depending on who was available.

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Next Chapter: Second Battle