The Lawkeeper of Samara (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 2) by Tim Stead Page A

bold, marked out in gold on the black leather cover, but now there were only flecks of the precious metal, and it was written in black on black.
    Ella held a candle behind the book and bent down so that she could see the rise and fall of the cover by the light of the flame. The words were still there.
    The Paths of Low Magick.
    She opened the book. She had done this before, and again it opened on the page she had glimpsed months ago, and there lay the symbols, or two of them at least, that had been on Sam’s bit of paper. This was the right book, her memory had not played her false.
    She read the page. It seemed to be describing the symbols – a guide to their meaning and divination. The ‘∩’ symbol headed the page.
    House. Protection. Safety. Defence. Prison.
    Beneath that lay ‘O’ and to Ella’s eyes it looked like a simple character, but it was defined as time, eternity, unending, continuity, more properly a snake swallowing its own tail.
    That was all on this page. She took a thin-bladed knife that she used for such work and very gently inserted it as close to the leather cover as she could. She teased the pages apart, blowing gently at the paper ends.
    She eased the pages over and lay the book open at this new place. It was a title page, and despite her care it seemed damaged. Many words were unreadable.
    ‘The Paths of Low Magick.
    ‘Their practice and workings forbidden by …
    ‘…these signs that you may know them…
    ‘Death. The cutting of the head from the body…
    ‘…vigilance against evil…’
    And that was all. About two thirds of the words had simply faded, or somehow been absorbed by the black leather cover. Many things were clear from this, however. She was right in thinking that the symbols related to magic, though they seemed to be linked to a practice that was outlawed, even back before the Faer Karan. It was also clear that the book was beyond recovery. She could not read it if it was in this state. It was forever lost.
    Nevertheless, she felt that she must do what she could, and so she fetched a pile of clean paper and a pen and began to copy out what little remained. When each page was finished she turned the next as best she could with knife, silk and air, and began again. No page was complete, and some had gone so completely that she could not discern a single word, but she persevered long into the night. When her candle failed she lit another. She refilled the lamps twice.
    After a while she stopped reading the words and concentrated on the letters. The words themselves were disturbing. It was like seeing something in half light, shadows and bits of a silhouette. What the book described was evil. It involved the killing of men women and children in terrible ways, obscene practices with dead bodies, the torture of animals. That much she could glean, but not the purpose. The book was true to the fragments on its title page. It did not seem at all concerned with how to do these things, but rather the ways in which they could be found out.
    She stopped. There was a picture, almost whole. It showed a human head viewed from the side and the front. It showed a needle. There was a word that she had never seen before: Teroganacy. She stared at the picture for some time before she copied it. It was so close to what Sam had described. The coincidence filled her with a sense of dread, and at the same time a sense of achievement. She had found something that would help, a clue, an arrow to point the way. But if that was true then the knowledge forbidden so long ago had somehow survived, and there was magic involved.
    Sam and his men had swords and bows and a great deal of courage, but she had seen what magic could do at the Battle of Samara Plain, and those images were still fresh. She had seen one man stand against two thousand, and the two thousand had never had a chance. Until that day she had thought of Cal Serhan, the Mage Lord, as a man. After the battle that illusion had been shredded,