Page 9 of This Dark Descent
Walking clockwise around the golem as best she could in the confinedspace, she recited the spell, speaking each old Kinnish letter carefully while holding her intent in her mind. It was a mental exercise that pushed the limits of her concentration, requiring her to channel her intent into the enchantment without fumbling a single syllable.
The power filled her in a rising tide, utterly intoxicating. Magic flowed from her lips like a breath of cold fire, streaming to the stone in the golem’s head. Her voice rose as she neared the end of the incantation, the force pouring out faster and faster until—a light erupted from the dog’s forehead, bright and pure as fresh snow. It rippled along the beast’s body, turning clay to muscle and bone and fur.
In a final breath, Ari completed the spell, the last wisps of magic escaping her in a rush, leaving her body warm and tingling pleasantly from the sensation. The light faded, revealing a heavily breathing hound with sleek black fur and oversized canines. It watched her with dark eyes, muscles bunched and ears twitching, as if unsure what to make of this sudden thrust into life.
“You and me both,” Ari muttered to the dog, placing the book on her workbench. She hesitated, her fingers curling into the soft leather. A low humming rose in the recesses of her mind.
Every time she put the book down, it felt like parting with a piece of herself. If she’d had her way, she’d have left the thing behind in her Saba’s workshop. She’d tried to. Yet it’d appeared in her satchel before she’d even left town. So she’d flung it into the Greystel River when she reached Veradell, only to find it dry and unharmed in her bag once more. It was an enchantment unlike anything she’d ever seen, magic from a lost time.
Someone pounded on the door. Ari started, knocking her head on a hanging basket of dead verillion stalks. The dog was between her and the entrance in an instant, a growl like grinding stones in its throat.
“Arielle?” Lady Belda’s high voice called. “Arielle, open the door.”
Ari scowled. This was why her windows were heavily curtained. If Lady Belda had arrived earlier and seen her crafting an animal out of clay, it wouldhave meant her life. She may not have recognized the golem for what it was, but she would have known the magic wasn’t Enderlish, and while many in Veradell might look past her unlicensed status in exchange for cheap enchantments, they would not ignore the use of Kinnish magic. It had been illegal long before the Enderlish government established the enchanter registry.
No matter that they both relied on the same powers; Enderlish enchanters used their magic to charm objects and living animals—they didn’t breathe life into clay, and that simple distinction meant the difference between steady work and a funeral pyre.
“Calm,” Ari said in Kinnish. The dog relaxed at once, lowering onto its haunches and panting softly.
Lady Belda pounded on the door again. Ari crossed the room to open it, revealing the first rays of sunlight filtering through a blanket of fog and smoke from the iron smelter down the road. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of burning coal and seawater—courtesy of the nearby Greystel River that cut through the city like a jagged scar before emptying into the Eban Sea—and held up a hand to block the light.
An incredibly pale woman constructed entirely of cosmetics and furs stood on Ari’s doorstep, her lips pinched, and eyebrows drawn. She wore a fox fur coat over a black silk blouse tucked into a pair of elaborately stitched pants. The house signet ring on her right index finger caught the morning light—a silver band with pink diamonds in a sun shape.
The two guards at her back weren’t much better. Dressed in three-piece suits with their hands on their holstered revolvers, they surveyed the area like they expected Ari’s neighbors to rob them on the spot.
Lady Belda surveyed her with a downward twist of her lips, and Ari felt a familiar, burning shame creep up her neck. She knew what Lady Belda saw. Olive skin caked in clay and sweat, her long curls frizzed and wild beneath her headscarf, and beyond her, a cramped room with peeling wallpaper, the edges stuffed with bundles of dried herbs and scavenged machine parts she hoped to sell. A small counter hosted the remnants ofAri’s last loaf of challah and the empty soup cans she’d yet to turn in for extra coin.
It was all she owned.
The noble lady lifted her chin. “My animal?”
Resisting the urge to order the golem to piss on the lady’s fine shoes, Ari stepped aside, allowing the woman her first glimpse of the beast.
“Charmed for aggression and obedience,” Ari said, though that last part wasn’t entirely true. All golems were obedient by nature, but Lady Belda thought she was getting an enchanted dog, not a clay sculpture come to life.
She dug out a paper from her apron pocket, proffering it to the woman. “Here is the list of commands.”
Lady Belda took the paper with extreme care not to touch her clay-covered fingers. She scrutinized the list, her eyebrows somehow managing to pinch even closer. “What sort of gibberish is this?”
“Kinnish.”
The eyebrows drew tighter. “Are you slow, girl? I don’t speak Kinnish. Give me the instructions in Enderlish.”
“It obeys only Kinnish.” Ari had explained this to the woman before accepting her order. Twice. Of all the millions of people in Enderlain, why was it her clients were always the most frustrating?
“How do you expect me to command something in a language I can’t speak?” Lady Belda’s nostrils flared.
Ari took a slow, deliberate breath. “You learn.”
Lady Belda’s eyebrows made it clear what she thought of that. “First you couldn’t do the ethereal enchantment I wanted, now you expect me to speak this ridiculous tongue? I should have known you’d tried to cheat me with cheap work.”
Ari flinched. She rarely accepted requests for ethereal enchantments, as they required higher amounts of verillion, and the powdered diamond necessary was out of her price range. That, and she struggled with the complexity of their inexact nature. To enchant something to never get lostor to detect lies, concepts that bordered on obscure, required training she didn’t have.
The majority of her spellbook was in old Kinnish, and most speakers of the ancient language were lost when Kinahara was overrun by the Heretics’ magic in the Cataclysm over a century ago. She could only access the first few pages her Saba had translated, and they were barely enough to figure out basic enchantments.
Lady Belda gestured one guard forward, who set a small sack of coins in her palm. She removed several silver marks, each side engraved with the royal crest consisting of the four greater house symbols: a lion’s head for the Kelbras, a curving set of horns for House Ruthar, the Vanadahls’ dual wings, and a serpent eating its own tail for House Dramara. A large silverZfor the Zuerlin royal family cut through the middle.
“Incomplete payment for an incomplete job,” Lady Belda said. Ari’s eyes narrowed, and the lady’s brows rose to her hairline. “Do we have a problem, girl?”
