The Painter Mage: Books 1-3 Read online

  The Painter Mage

  Books 1-3

  D.K. Holmberg

  ASH Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Shifted Agony

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Arcane Mark

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Painter For Hire

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Also by D.K. Holmberg

  Copyright © 2015 by D.K. Holmberg

  Cover by Rebecca Weaver

  Editing by Shelley Holloway

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  If you want to be notified when D.K. Holmberg’s next novel is released and get free stories and occasional other goodies, please sign up for his mailing list by going here . Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  www.dkholmberg.com

  Shifted Agony

  1

  In retrospect, I think it was the drawing that summoned me. Given the way life had gone to that point, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’m a painter, but not like the kind you can find in art museums and galleries, and somewhere above your average house painter in skill. I can use color and shapes and patterns to infuse them with power. In that, I’m more like a wizard than anything, except I don’t have any spells or incantations. Sometimes I wished I did; it might be easier than working the magic I command.

  I’d only been back in Conlin a few months, hoping to learn enough to keep a friend alive, when I felt the power of the drawing. For me to detect it meant serious power was used. Sitting cross-legged in my living room working with a new colored ink, enjoying quiet and peace and the fact that no one tried to kill me, I felt it thrumming against my senses, like an aching tooth. Since my return, I feared discovery. It had been hard enough breaking away as it was. Now that I’d returned to my childhood home—a place where I should have been safe—I thought my friend Devan and I had several more months before we were discovered, not the barely two months it had been.

  Power drew me to the park abutting my house. The park in Conlin was a wide expanse of wooded lawn surrounded by a high river rock wall, the last remnants of a different era when the park needed to be protected. Paver stones led to a central plaza where an enormous water fountain sculpture occupied most of a clearing. Spartan cement benches were set around it. A soft burbling came from the water fountain and the air still carried the charge of the recent storm.

  I found her sitting alone in the middle of it all.

  She had her legs crossed over each other like she was in meditation, eyes closed with her petite chin tilted toward the center of the plaza where the fountain resembled a demonic creature. The girl’s jet-black hair hung past her shoulders and caught the occasional gust, the dying remnants of the storm from earlier, and framed her olive face. She was beautiful and exotic and clearly didn’t belong in Conlin. She sat, sketching quietly. The sketch must have been what drew me here. At least she wasn’t what I feared.

  I still considered turning back. I knew where she came from. I didn’t fear her but still didn’t want anything to do with them. And, as far as I knew, they wanted nothing to do with me. Or they hadn’t. For her to be here meant something had changed.

  Instead of turning back and heading home, I hesitated at the edge of the plaza. Enormous oaks ringed it, their leaves dripping from the recent rain and obscuring the rest of the city, even filtering the noise of traffic along the street. Aromatic pine trees dotted the park, so common around Conlin, their long, brown needles leaving soft trails through the woods.

  I dragged my foot through the dirt, parting the needles as I went, working up against the gray stones that made up the plaza and moving slowly to avoid her notice as I formed my protective circle. Not a true painting, but creating this shape didn’t require much power from me, barely more than the lightest touch. After I completed the circle, a soft pop of electricity worked over my skin, little more than a static shock.

  “Are you finished?” She opened her eyes and spoke without facing me.

  She’d sensed me. Or my power. Either should have warned me more than it did.

  I stepped across the threshold of the circle, careful not to disrupt it. A simple shape, one of the earliest a painter learns to create, but in a place like this, even the circle was difficult. Too much power worked through the park as it was. It was the reason I dared returning home. Whatever I added now should barely register.

  “Who are you?” I asked, careful to keep my distance.

  She pushed herself to her feet and I noticed the wide sketchpad she held in one hand. Her other clutched two thick pencils. My eyes caught some details of the dark sketch she’d been working on. I saw only glimpses, but enough to tell me that she had skill.

  A relieved smile parted her lips. “You’re him.”

  I frowned and kept my legs separated slightly. The stance held power of its own that I could augment. A small sachet of red-colored ink was hidden in my palm. If needed, I could splash a quick pattern, enough to protect myself. That is, unless she was an artist. Despite what I saw of the notepad, I still couldn’t tell.

  Artists were painters like me: able to use shapes and colors and patterns to draw power. True artists were rare. Me, I’m the kind of painter known as a tagger. I can pull power—and quickly—but nothing like what an artist could achieve. Taggers were still not common, but more so than artists.

  “You’re Escher Morris.”

  If I had any question about where she came from, the fact that she knew my name answered it. A gift from my disappeared father—not dead, though I might be the only one who believed that—he named me Escher as a nod to the old Dutch artist. Mother never loved the name, but like with so much else, she wouldn’t go against him. Instead, she gave me her father’s name as a middle name. It’s what I preferred.

  “Oliver,” I said, squeezing the ink in my hand a little more tightly. “And you are?”

  The woman turned slowly, eyes scanning the edge of the trees, before working back to fix me with a flat, gray-eyed stare. The wind gusted again and she jumped slightly before answering. “Taylor.”

  I made a point of walking along the edge of the stone plaza, keeping both Taylor and the statue at the edge of my vision as I circled around. At this time of night, no one else came to the park. That Taylor had been here at all shouldn’t have surprised me—if she was an artist, no gate would keep her out—but artists
generally feared the night, even one as calm and clear as tonight. And usually for good reason.

  “How did you know about this place?” I asked.

  She gave the statue a wide berth as she came toward me. The thing looked less like the mixture of wolf and man some claimed it to be and more like the demon I saw in it. Agony of the Chase, it was called. A famous statue—well, as famous as they get in Conlin—and placed here by my father. I still didn’t know why.

  “You don’t deny it?” Taylor asked.

  I shrugged. “Would it matter if I did? Seems you already know.”

  “Hard said—”

  I stiffened at the mention of his name and glared at her. “If Hard sent you, I’m not interested.” I started to turn away. She might have triggered me coming to the park, but there wasn’t much she could say to convince me to remain.

  She stopped in front of me, blocking my path. She dragged her feet as she went, leaving a faintly shimmering trail along the damp stones. Power I hadn’t noticed radiated from the irregular triangle she formed.

  Damn. She was good.

  Most in Arcanus never learned to be subtle with their power, especially artists. They preferred using paper or canvas for their work, never thinking of using the larger canvas available in the world. Taylor did.

  Arcanus was a place to study the power painters could wield, but more than that, it was a place of safety. Hidden and buried deep in the Rockies, no one other than painters went to Arcanus. Some left, though they were mostly taggers like myself. Artists never left. They stayed, presumably to study, but the real reason was what they feared would happen if they left.

  I met her eyes. “What do you want?” I could leave her here, but it was night and she wouldn’t have any other place to safely go, not without risking herself. She knew that, which was at least part of the reason she’d come here.

  “What is it?” She waved the hand holding the pencils toward the sculpture.

  Like her, I pulled my foot through the rainwater as I slid toward the sculpture, leaving a slight trail as I did. I wondered if she recognized the pattern I made, if not the intent. Combined with the circle I’d made outside the plaza, I added interlocking angles, distorted in such a way to confuse the eye. Arcane patterns. With it, I could hold her in place and buy myself enough time to get away. The rainwater would be transient but should hold in the stone well enough, especially if I pressed enough intent into it.

  “It’s called Agony of the Chase.” I dipped a hint of red powder into the pattern as I went. It was the only color I had with me, but would work well for what I had intended. With painting, color mattered, as did intent and the patterns used.

  She flipped her hair back and stared at the bronzed plate set in the stone in front of the statue. The surface of the plate was completely smooth, as if time had weathered away whatever had once been written there. “A bit melodramatic of a title, don’t you think? You might as well call it Big Scary Manwolf,” she said as she kneeled before the plate. Her fingers lingered as she dragged them over the surface.

  The comment caught me off guard and I laughed. “That’s not really how he preferred to name his sculptures…” I trailed off as I saw the dark blue powder dusting her fingers. I wondered what she planned. Blue had its uses—not as many as red or black when it came to defending yourself—but if she was an artist, I couldn’t put much past her.

  I stopped moving, cupping the satchel of powder. With a practiced flick of my wrist, I could send out a pretty good circle of ink and quickly infuse it with energy to do some damage. Not as neat as what I could do given more time, but effective. Normally I’d worry about who else might be around me, but the circle I’d created around the edge of the trees would contain any extra energy. And I didn’t have to worry about Agony; as far as I knew, nothing could destroy it.

  “You didn’t come to look at the local artwork, so why are you here, Taylor?” I asked carefully.

  She gave me a forced smile. Her eyes didn’t change or soften, but she shifted, sliding her hands into her pockets. When she pulled them out, the pencils—and the hint of blue powder—were gone.

  “I need help.”

  “And Hard sent you to me?” Considering what happened the last time we saw each other, that seemed unlikely. Like his assumed name, he was a bastard, but he was a skilled bastard. An artist, in the truest sense of the word. Had he come, there would be different questions, but he never ventured outside the safety of Arcanus. As long as I didn’t get too close to him, I’d be fine.

  She followed me to a rain-soaked bench. “I found something in the library. I…” She hesitated and pulled something out of a deep pocket, flashing the cover of a leather-bound book toward me. “I hoped you might have some way to decipher it.”

  I glanced at the book. The library in Arcanus had a massive collection. How many of those books had notes written by my father in the years he’d been there? How many would help me with my work? Since leaving Arcanus—well, since I was expelled—I didn’t have access to the same quality of work. It didn’t mean my studies ended, only that I no longer learned from books. I’d had different and far deadlier tutors. I had hoped some of that would end now that I had returned to Conlin. Here, I might be stuck using whatever texts I could find among my father’s old belongings, but at least I didn’t risk death with everything I did.

  “What’s in the book?” I asked.

  She flipped open the first few pages and showed me. Intricate shapes streaked across the page, looking more like an ancient language than any kind of pattern. I’d seen similar shapes before. And if Taylor worked with Hard in Arcanus, she had, too.

  “You recognize them,” she said.

  I nodded. No use denying it.

  “Have you…” Her head swiveled slowly, as if studying the trees, or trying to look past the trees and into Conlin. It was a bedroom city, the streets filled with brick and wood homes, most decades old. Most were well kept. There was pride in Conlin, but there wasn’t much else here, other than the park. “Have you found anything to decipher them?”

  “Would I tell you if I had? Would I let him know if I had?” I took a steadying breath, getting control of my voice. It had been years since I’d seen Hard, but the mention of his name still angered me. It was partly because of him that I left Arcanus. He might not have been the one to banish me, but he’d been the reason the process had started. And Hard could have stopped it at any time, but didn’t.

  Her hand dipped back into her pocket. I wondered what color powder she palmed. I dragged my eyes away from her pocket, wishing I hadn’t come. I wanted nothing of Arcanus business. Since leaving, I’d discovered lessons the Masters there would never have been able to teach. Given what they feared, why should the Masters in Arcanus care what I researched? They all thought my father dead, destroyed by his own arrogance. Funny they should consider him arrogant.

  Besides, I had a new life since leaving Arcanus. I’d learned things about patterns and colors that I could never learn there, things the Masters refused to teach. Of course, I’d nearly died a dozen times acquiring that knowledge.

  I tipped my head toward the book she’d pocketed when she went for her powder. “If you’re here, it’s because he sent you.” I stood and wiped my hands on my pants. “Hard wouldn’t have shown you those patterns if he didn’t think you could help. And he wouldn’t have let you out of Arcanus with that book if he didn’t think you could learn something.”

  She shot me a look that bordered on pouty. For the first time, I wondered how old she was. I thought with her hardened eyes and the soft curves, she had to have been in her twenties. Now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t remember a Taylor from my time in Arcanus, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have been there. Or maybe they’d found her. Painters were discovered all the time and brought to Arcanus to study, all searching for the next artist.

  Soft white lights flickered on from the three lanterns circling the plaza holding Agony. Taylor’s head jerked around at the sud
den change in lighting. I smiled. Likely she felt the power I surged through the bulbs as well.

  The sculpture might be my father’s, created for reasons I hadn’t discovered, but the protections around this park, protections I had placed since returning to keep people like Taylor out, were all mine. I might not be an artist, but in spite of what Hard and the others in Arcanus believed, I was more than a simple tagger.

  More lights flickered on in the park, each adding to the pattern. Night could be dangerous for an artist—even for a tagger, though we generally had less to worry about than artists did—and the lights did more than brighten up the park. They kept it clear of them.

  “This is your work,” Taylor said.

  “Some of it.”

  “It’s…” She seemed to struggle for the right word. “It’s powerful. Does it work?” she asked, intensity burning in her eyes.

  It hadn’t been tested before. Hopefully it wouldn’t be tested tonight. “Well enough.”

  “What about the…”

  She didn’t finish, but since she studied in Arcanus, she didn’t have to.

  There was a reason painters stayed in Arcanus once their abilities manifested. In Arcanus, they called them hunters. Creatures that came in the night, drawing on artists, feeding on their power. Vampires, if you ask me, only no one did. They’d never been seen, not even by the Masters, but stories of painters falling to them made all fear them. Boogeymen who only came out at night, their haunting howls the only warning. Those who left Arcanus lived with the fear that the hunters would come for them.

  “That’s why you never returned,” Taylor said.

  She shifted nervously and another gust of wind fluttered through. As it did, I noticed the blue streaks deeper in her hair. I studied her eyes, saw the drawn expression on her face that belied the confident way she questioned me. Something wasn’t quite right.

  I didn’t fear the night the same as I had when I first left Arcanus. I’d seen too much since then. Not hunters. As far as I knew, they were nothing more than superstition, but there were other creatures of power, other reasons for me to place protections around the park.