half-lich 02 - void weaver by katerina martinez Read Free Book Online

magistrate anything they could use against him in this case. But then, Jim’s unsanctioned visit could very well be enough.
    “I didn’t,” Isaac said, “Logan brought it in and presented it to the praetors. He thought I had something to do with it.”
    “Do you?”
    “Of course not. I don’t know anything about that camera besides what I already told the court. The camera belonged to a photographer who attended my museum event the other night. Seeing as though you’re here, however, I think you wish I had known the photographer. Why is that?”
    Jim pushed his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose. “Did you see the sigils?” he asked.
    “I got a glimpse, but it wasn’t enough for me to identify them.”
    The librarian reached into his jacket pocket and produced a piece of paper. He handed it over to Isaac. On it, there were exact copies of the runes and sigils Isaac had seen on the inside of Alice’s broken camera, as well as sigils which hadn’t been on the camera itself, but that Isaac had seen on the inside of the trapdoor at the Cinema Royale, and again in Alice’s apartment.
    “What are they?” Isaac asked—a genuine question.
    “Magic,” Jim said. “More specifically, they’re a magic alphabet.”
    “An alphabet?”
    “Of sorts, yes. Hieroglyphics designed not by human hands, but by mages .”
    “Do you know who they belong to?”
    “That’s the tricky thing. I do, but I don’t see how these markings exist. Here. Now.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    Jim sat on the chair Isaac had a moment ago been sitting on. He glanced at the Mountain of Madness paperback on the table and then looked up at Isaac again. “Have you ever heard of an ancient, secret sect of mages called… the Void Weavers?”
    “I can’t say I have, though I do recognize the Void.”
    “What do you know of it?”
    “If I’m not mistaken, there are other worlds—other planes of existence—beyond that blasted place we call the Reflection. I have heard of those worlds, collectively, being referred to as the Void, a place where no one goes and nothing lives.”
    “Wrong and so wrong. I thought you were supposed to be smart, Moreau.”
    “My field of expertise is in human anthropology, Jim. Mine is the gift to detect traces of the mystic woven into the fabric of the mundane, not the secrets within the magical. Those require more effort. I have studied our culture greatly, but there are still gray areas in which I am not as well versed as I would like to be. The Void is one of them.”
    “You’re not special in that regard. Many mages know nothing of the Void, only what they know from stories passed down orally or in books. The Void is a well-kept secret, and the weavers are responsible for that.”
    Isaac walked over to the window where the crows still stood, perched, watching carefully. Cars hissed along below on wet streets. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the sickly yellow clouds above.
    “So these Void Weavers,” Isaac said, “They hold the keys to the secrets of the Void?”
    “According to what little information is available on them, that is the general consensus. They were an order of mages who dedicated themselves to the study of the Void, learning its secrets, harnessing its power, and bringing it to bear on humanities enemies, but they’re gone—and no one knows why.” Jim pressed his glasses back into place. “You understand, then, why this is such a magnificent find. I feel like an archaeologist discovering the remnants of a long lost civilization.”
    “Not quite an archaeologist, though.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, the Void Weavers aren’t extinct.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong. The Void Weavers are gone, Isaac. Every last one of them. No one knows where they’ve gone, or when the last one walked on this side of the reality spectrum.”
    “And yet one of them made that camera. It would seem like we have, or recently had , Void Weavers in Ashwood.”
    “The camera, as far as I