Swift Magic (The Swift Codex Book 2) (13 page)

“I feel it, too,” I said.

“They thought I couldn't do anything. I wasn't a water or fire elemental. What could I do?” The tears ran down her cheeks. “I just wanted them to let me go. It happened in a few minutes, that was all, and they were all dead. I'd killed them. I couldn't breathe, they couldn't either. I didn't mean for it to happen, I didn't, but I panicked and I couldn't leave, and next I know…we're dead.”

The young woman started to sob. “I'm so sorry. I don't mean to. I'm sorry.”

I started for the door.

“You can't leave. You came in, you can't go back out. None of the others who came here could leave, either.”

My heart pounded in my chest, and I let out a slow breath. Mordon looked worried, like he didn't want to ask what fate befell the others.

“It's the protective circle,” I said. “Someone modified it so that the only ones who could leave were the ones given permission to.”

“But if this is a residual haunt…” Mordon said.

I shook my head and held up my palm, bleeding where splinters had cut in it. “Some aspects are residual, but not all of them.”

“I'm so sorry,” the young woman said again. “It'll be soon.”

We heard the splashing of oars. The next bolt of lightning revealed the whole camp returning to the docks, a wailing young woman being roughly held by two father figures.

The young woman saw herself and shrieked, “Don't do it! Don't do it!”

I grabbed Mordon's hand, squeezed it tight, and said, “Give me all the energy you've got.”

He clasped a fist into my hair and kissed me hard. His magic flowed into me, replenishing what I'd lost by futilely thrashing it against a residual wind. More power filled my veins, my muscles, making my hair stand on end.

Then the air compressed about my chest, knocking the breath out of me. Mordon's gasp broke through my pain. I focused, driving my magic straight down, into the Grand Master's protective circle. He hadn't been alone in making it. All the village elders had contributed, tossing their strength into the pot, and many years of natural power had fed into the circle, strengthening it for its nightly battering.

I heard their voices in my ears. I clutched onto them, listening to them harder and harder until I heard them in normal tones. When I opened my eyes, I saw the thirteen of them standing in a circle around this pavilion, in the process of making the circle.

I plunged into the process, yelling the words in my mind over and over, until I blended with the spell-casting. My magic and Mordon's swirled into the present-day spell, infecting it with his strength. My eyes were darkening and my lungs burned. The residual young woman was back in a boat, rowing it fiercely. She was about to reach the circle, and she'd find it still closed.

I commanded them to let her go.

The elder ghosts turned to me, blinking, scowling, some surprised.

Let her go.

The mother figure objected, and the others listened.

“Then break apart.”

They stared at me in confusion, then my command spread through the spell, disintegrating it. The wind and rain broke through the inner protection surrounding the pavilion and the ghosts swooped down.

The pavilion plunged into free fall. My stomach soared upwards, I grasped for Mordon's hands. And the young woman put her hand against the outermost sphere. Pain flooded my senses, my stomach was in my mouth, and all I wanted to do was scream as we dove down through nothing, knowing that the inky blackness of a watery death awaited.

My knees clattered against the dock, jarring me to a stop. Mordon grunted as he hit the wood planks beside me. Pain and adrenaline flooded my senses.

I gasped, choking on air, blinking tears from my eyes.

It was bright. Midday. Lyall stood on the dock, his boat tied to it. There was no sign of ghosts, no storm, and no uncontrollable wind. My ears rang with the complete silence.

Everything was as it had been when we'd landed here yesterday. My heart still pounded through my veins and my body was still recovering from the terror of falling through nothing. My mind was still thrumming with the echo of the protective ward, and my skin was wet with sweat. A breeze chilled me and stiffened the hair on my arms. One glance at Mordon confirmed it: he was every bit as astounded as I was.

The water was calm. Lyall looked on at us with suppressed amusement, as if he had seen his friend stumble and found it funny.

I sagged onto the dock, laying flat on my back and just breathing. The water tapped against the posts of the dock, and I heard the flap of a duck as she beat her wings against the surface of the water. After this was the soft calls of her ducklings. The wood under my shirt felt scratchy and uncomfortable, but I wasn't ready yet to come to terms with what had happened. Mordon moved.

Mordon climbed to his feet, brow wrinkled in confusion. I gathered my legs under my body, gaping in awe at my surroundings, trying to get my bearings.

“Need help?” Lyall asked, offering his hand.

When I didn't take Lyall's hand, he took out his pipe, filled it, and started to smoke. He said in a tourist-guide sort of way, “Part of my job is to look after the old monuments. If anyone has tampered with them, then I report it to the sheriff. If I think he'd be of any help in these matters.”

My jaw dropped. Mordon drew me up by the arm, equally pale as we listened to Lyall talk as though nothing had happened since we stepped out of the boat.

“But since you're with me, I thought I'd take you guys by here and let you look around. If you go up the ladder, be careful. Some of the wood has rotted away, and some kids let their dogs chew up the posts and things.”

I was able to say, “Mordon, it's all ruined.”

Nearest to us, a wagon's door yawned in the wind, its windows broken out, its roof a bare frame of three arches. Half the wagons were gone or split in two, their soft canvas coverings gone, their bright paints chipped away by the weather. The walkway boards had huge gaps and seaweed growing on them. Of the pavilion, little remained, just an octagonal platform and the stubs of posts.

“What's wrong? You never seen a floating pioneer camp?”

I brushed by Lyall, went straight for the wagon we'd been shown to for guest quarters. Nothing was left of the pavilion besides a few posts which might have been used for anything, and currently were used for nesting places by some bird or another. When we came to the wagon we slept in, I just stared at it. It smelled of dead fish and bird feathers, and boasted a nest in one corner. Mordon watched as I reached under the bench which had been the guest bed, and I withdrew the remains of a right shoe which was the perfect, rotted remains of my left one.

Lyall waited for us by the boat.

As we rowed back across the lake, Lyall hummed beneath his breath, “Do you know what happened to the lost souls of Alarum? Alarum, oh, Alarum.”

By the time I had mastered keeping a protective circle around the camp all night long, we had entered a part of the forest which was all quaking aspens and brilliant stalks of larkspur. The difference between this idyllic landscape and the hostility of our entrance made me wonder. Even the insects were bumble bees and butterflies, with none of the biters we had been eaten by earlier in our explorations. Animals approached us, me in particular, to smell my clothes or take offerings of leaves or berries. Their friendliness was enchanting.

Days passed in the forest, an endless cycle of survival and travel. Beneath Lyall's guidance, I came to know the ways of the Verdant Wildwoods. I named all the plants and animals along the trail and would even venture some distance from the others. As a means of defense, Lyall employed a heavy knife. I learned to compress air down into an arrow and shoot targets. During the evenings, Mordon and Lyall tolerated my experiments with various modifications to the fey circle.

Though the forest still shifted and changed around us, I no longer minded it when a boulder was replaced with a tree, or a glen became a hillside. I stayed close to the men, taking Mordon by the hand and slowing him down. Lyall stiffened when he realized I wanted to speak to Mordon alone, and grudgingly gave us space.

“How long do you think we've been here?” I asked.

“Time and the perception of it is all askew here, so it's impossible to know,” Mordon said while ducking a buzzing bee.

“We haven't had a test in some time.”

Mordon frowned. “Very unlike the Wildwoods to give you a break, I believe.”

“Right,” I said, “so it's more likely that we're currently in a test?”

Mordon lifted his gaze to the man smoking against a tree, waiting for us to catch up. “But what test is it?”

“Let's find out,” I said and skipped ahead. “Lyall, how much longer are you going to walk us in a big old loop before you take me to the Fey Council?”

Lyall coughed on his smoke. “What—what makes you think that?”

“Just little things,” I put my hand on my hip. “But I know that the woods has an ever-changing landscape and that the Fey Council is just as close or far as the Lake Alarum or the place we'd entered. Isn't that right?”

“It's not like that,” Lyall said, and he sucked on the pipe though the smoke had died. I examined him and reflected on our conversations.

“Not exactly, but a close approximation. So, we could go anywhere at any time—yet we're walking through the backwoods. Funny, we're following you, a patrolman, who knows where everything is in the Wildwoods and how to get there. It's been a very long time since I have seen a test, which means I'm in one now. All this beauty—it's a distraction. That's right?”

“Everyone has different tests, it's impossible to know what it is or who is involved.”

“Sure. But I say it's a test, because we aren't at the Fey Council. I'd forgotten about my goal a few hours at a time, which could mean I forgot for a few days of weeks, or even mere seconds. Now. Show us to the feys. Or do Mordon and I have to strike out on our own?”

“No,” Lyall said, flushed. “That's the last thing you should do. I can't control where the path goes, not completely, but I can ask to go somewhere and see if it leads there.”

“Then show us the way.”

“It's not that easy. There will be trouble. Maybe we'd best leave it until later?”

“We go to the village now.”

Lyall wanted to object, but my resolve had spread through the woods. There was nothing he could do but dip his head and shuffle back onto the trail again.

“I don't know what you'll see,” Lyall said. “It won't be nice.”

We came to a thick hedge which was as tall as I could see, with no way through it. Lyall looked to us, and put his hand through the hedge, pulling branches aside and revealing a clearing.

“Mordon first,” Lyall said. “Then you after, Feraline.”

“Why?” I asked, putting out a hand to stop Mordon.

“The way it has to be,” Lyall said. “Or we go back to Tour de Wildwoods.”

Mordon nodded once to me then passed through the hedge. I watched the branches wriggle at his passing.

Lyall twitched his hands. “Right, off you go, then.”

I entered the clearing and Lyall let the hedges swing back into place. As soon as I tugged my clothes free from a wayward thorn, I checked for Mordon. He was nowhere to be seen. I stepped out into the meadow, the grass soft and the air too still.

I'd had a feeling to not let Mordon out of my sight, but there was nothing I could do for it now. I glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mordon or something which could point me to him.

There was just the trees and the grass and me. No animals lurked in the area, nor was there much of anything. My magic said there was no where to go. We might as well be in a room. And if Mordon was out in the trees, it would be easier for him to find me if I was not out there looking for him. So I made my way to the center of the clearing, I sat down, and I waited.

After a while, I stirred. If I hadn't been sleeping, I was close to it. There was a voice nearby, a woman talking to herself. She was everything I was and everything I was not. She was me, but better. Taller, with graceful limbs and an ethereal beauty. She gazed down at me with a smirk.