The Far West (31 page)

After that, we moved the dissection right to the edge of the protection spells, as far away from everyone else as we could get, and Dr. Lefevre was even more careful than he’d been before. He claimed it was because he didn’t want to ruin another one of his dissecting knives. None of us believed him, but nobody wanted to say so. He was cranky enough already.

The rock dragon had more venom sacks in its front legs, set so that the oil could squeeze out of the long spike that rose from the back of its hands. Dr. Lefevre pressed his lips together when he saw them and said, “I believe we have discovered the source of that strange injury on the sphinx Mr. Morris brought in some weeks ago.”

Professor Torgeson frowned. “That’s just a guess.”

“Provisional theory,” Dr. Lefevre corrected.

The only good news was that the dragon’s venom had so much concentrated magic that Dr. Lefevre was sure it had to stick to highly magical areas to maintain it. Professor Ochiba wondered out loud whether this was why so much of the magical wildlife we’d run into could absorb magic, which made Professor Torgeson mutter some more about speculations.

We did a test on one of the venom sacks, and established that sucking all the magic out of it did neutralize the venom inside. Professor Torgeson said that still didn’t prove anything, but at least it gave us a way to fight it if another rock dragon got near enough to someone to spit venom at him.

“Which is highly unlikely,” Dr. Lefevre explained when he told Captain Velasquez, Adept Alikaket, and Mr. Corvales what we’d found. “A predator such as this needs a large territory, and would not tolerate others of its kind within the area it claims.”

“Any idea how to tell how big an area that would be?” Captain Velasquez asked.

“I’m afraid not; not exactly,” Dr. Lefevre replied. “Given its size and speed, however, I believe it unlikely that we’ll cross into another dragon’s territory for a day’s ride, at least. However, when we do, the rock dragon’s need for high levels of magic means that it will very likely be hunting near the river.”

“Well, at least we know what to expect now,” the captain replied with a sigh. “Would you ask Miss Dzozkic and Mr. Boden to step in? I’d like to know if they can estimate how much farther we have to go before they’re satisfied.”

We had just left the tent to look for them when one of the guards shouted, “Rock dragons!”

There were nine of them, coming straight for us across the plains from the south, and if we hadn’t camped on a rise, we wouldn’t have seen them until they were on top of us. They moved with the familiarity and coordination of a pack of wolves, and I realized that nobody had thought of dragons hunting in packs. Why would we? Ice dragons and steam dragons were solitary hunters; so were the extinct mountain dragons of Ashia and the sand dragons of the Sahara.

Rock dragons were, apparently, different from other dragons in more than size and meanness. I ran for my rifle, like almost everyone else who wasn’t carrying theirs around in camp. The guards were already firing. I heard the deep boom of one of the elephant guns, and then another.

“It’s flying!” someone yelled.

A hand grabbed my arm and spun me around. It was William, panting like he’d run after me. “The venom,” he gasped out. “We have to neutralize it. Magicians’ job.”

I stared at him for a second, then nodded. I’d never really thought of myself as one of the magicians; I’d always figured that I was better with a gun than with spells. But I was one of the six people left in the magicians’ section of the expedition, even if I
was only Professor Torgeson’s assistant, and except for the folks we’d just told, we were the only ones who knew about the venom and what to do about it. And with nine rock dragons —

The air trembled and I felt the same sucking I’d felt by the river. The protection spells around the camp shivered and shrank. “Fall back to the shield line!” Captain Velasquez shouted behind me, and the row of people with guns moved back until they were inside the protection spells again.

I felt another pull, and off to one side I saw Elizabet Dzozkic collapse, along with the protection spells.
She must have been the one holding them
, I thought. Then I felt a familiar surge, and the protection spells were back, stronger and solider than before.

“Lan!” I gasped. “What’s he doing?”

“Never mind!” William said, and pointed past the line of soldiers facing the rock dragons through the protection spells. Two of the dragons had taken to the air and were almost to the soldiers. “You do that one; I’ll get the other. Then go for the ones on the ground.”

I nodded and reached out with my world-sensing. It was a lot harder with live rock dragons; at first I couldn’t find any of them. Then I realized that I was feeling a rock that was up in the air and moving, and I latched onto it and cast the spell Dr. Lefevre used to drain magic from the venom sacks of the one we’d dissected.

The spell took hold, but slowly. Too slowly. The rock dragon would be on us before the venom’s magic was fully drained, and the rest of the pack was right behind it — there wasn’t time to take care of all of them.

I sank deeper into the magic, looking frantically for a way
to tweak the draining spell so that it would work faster and cover more of the rock dragons. And then, suddenly, I fell through into the quiet that was just magic and no spells.

It was like being deep underwater, knowing that above me there were fish swimming, and higher up there were boats and people fishing and swimming and splashing, but none of it could reach where I was. It felt like the ocean in my dreams. It felt
right
.

I took a deep breath, struggling to keep a sense of the world around me as well as all the magic. All the magic … I had more magic than I’d ever need, but I didn’t know how to make it do what I wanted. I didn’t know enough, and there wasn’t enough time for me to figure it all out. But there were other people who knew.

I reached out, up through the currents of magic, until I felt the spells that people were weaving. I recognized Lan’s magic first, holding the protection spell around the camp with every bit of power a double-seventh son had. Pushing more magic up to him was easy, because he had so much already that I didn’t have to worry about burning him out.

The protection spells solidified into a glimmering dome. I saw the first of the airborne rock dragons crash into it and bounce off, hissing. It spat, but the venom hit the barrier and ran down it like raindrops running down a windowpane. The ground at the bottom smoked and bubbled, but the spell was undamaged; magic couldn’t burn magic.

William came next, because I’d worked with him enough that his magic was almost as familiar as Lan’s. I tried to be more careful with pushing magic at him, but the minute I started, he sort of slid down through all the water to join me.

“What on earth —?” I heard him say.

“It’s just magic!” I said aloud. “Use it!”

“Right.”

I felt his world-sensing spread out, shaping the raw magic to drain the rock dragons’ venom. That gave me an idea, and I looked up. Sure enough, Wash and Professor Ochiba both had their world-sensing working as hard as ever they could make it go. I reached for both of them, and this time, instead of pushing magic at them, I pulled them down through all the types and layers of magic to the place where I was, where it was all the same.

I didn’t stop to see what they’d do with it; I looked around to see who I could pull in next. I saw Adept Alikaket, practically glowing from bringing his magic up as high as it would go. I saw him blow the wing off a rock dragon that had just launched itself into the air, and I hesitated. The adept was doing just fine without any extra power, and I didn’t want to distract him. On the other hand, he probably knew more about using extra power than anyone else there, what with the way Hijero-Cathayan group spells worked. I stretched up.

It was harder with Adept Alikaket, because I didn’t know him the way I knew Lan and William, and I didn’t know much about the Cathayan magic he was using, not the way I knew the Aphrikan magic that Professor Ochiba and Wash used. Then he seemed to sense what I was trying to do, and a bit of his spell opened up to let me in. I didn’t go in; I grabbed the edges of the opening and pulled him down to join the rest of us.

I did Dr. Lefevre and Professor Torgeson next, then looked for anyone else who was using magic to fight. Roger
was standing next to Sergeant Amy; she was reloading a repeater rifle while he threw blasts of fire at a dragon who hissed and spat against the protection barrier, less than three feet in front of them. I shoved magic at him, and his next blast charred the dragon’s leg to the bone. Mr. Corvales was using his magic to aim the elephant gun; I waited until he’d finished the shot, then pushed magic at him, too.

I was running out of magicians, and I still didn’t know how to work with all the magic. I let myself float up to the surface of the magic, figuring I could let everyone else handle the spells now, while I got my rifle.

I didn’t need it. The pack of rock dragons were all dead. Some had been shot; some had been burned or crushed by spells; one of the flying ones had crashed into the ground from too high up. The shimmering dome of Lan’s protection spells slowly faded back to normal as I watched.

All around me, people lowered their guns or relaxed from their spell casting and started taking stock. We hadn’t gotten off scot-free. Elizabet was still unconscious, with Bronwyn minding her. Wash had a burn down one side where he’d been caught by a spray of venom, one of the soldiers had been badly clawed, and two of the horses were dead. All of the magicians were wobbly on their feet, though it was hard to tell whether it was from what I’d done to most of them, from too much spell casting generally, or just from having been in a big fight. Still, we hadn’t actually lost anyone, which was a lot better than it could have been.

“Well,” Mr. Corvales said loudly after a moment. “I believe that settles it. We are
not
going any farther west.”

There were a lot of shaky laughs, and Wash’s voice called back, “I do believe you won’t get much argument on that, Mr. Corvales.”

“We’re moving out as soon as we can,” Captain Velasquez announced. “We’ve a few hours yet till sunset, and I don’t want to spend the night fighting off the scavengers this lot will draw.”

Everyone nodded and most folks began moving toward the tents. I sat down right where I was and put my head in my hands.

“Are you all right, Eff?” William asked.

“Just wobbly, like everyone else,” I said.

“What
was
that? That thing you did?”

“I think we’d all like to know that, Miss Rothmer.”

I looked up. Adept Alikaket, Dr. Lefevre, and most of the other magicians I’d pulled into the deep levels of magic had come over to me instead of starting to take down their tents, and they were all looking at me expectantly. The only one missing was Wash, who’d gone off to get his burns fixed up.

I sighed. “I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s just … remember how I said all magic feels the same underneath? That’s what I meant. That was underneath.”

“
That’s
your explanation?” Lan said indignantly.

I glared at him. “It’s all the explanation I have! I don’t know how it works; I just
did
it. You’re the one who knows magical theory —
you
explain it!”

“I suspect you have just revolutionized our basic theories of magic, Miss Rothmer,” Dr. Lefevre said with a sidelong glance at Adept Alikaket.

The adept’s lips tightened, then he shook his head rue
fully. “Theories aside, do you have any idea why and how you were able to do what you did?” he asked me.

Professor Ochiba looked at me with a tiny smile. “She is the seventh daughter —”

“— of a seventh son,” Lan put in, and grinned at me.

“— making her a double-seventh child,” the professor continued with a small frown in Lan’s direction. “And she is the twin sister of a seventh son of a seventh son, and a thirteenth child.”

I shivered, then remembered the conversation I’d had with Professor Ochiba back in day school, when she’d explained that different places didn’t all see being a thirteenth child as a bad thing the way Avrupans did. And there were all those other things, too.

“Unprecedented, in other words,” Dr. Lefevre said in a very dry tone.

“That is one way to look at it,” Professor Ochiba said. Lan, William, and I all looked at each other and tried not to smile.

“We’ll have plenty of time to study this phenomenon on the trip back,” Professor Torgeson said, and I wasn’t quite sure whether she meant me or the magic. “In the meantime —”

Before she could finish, something shivered through the air, making all the hairs on my arms stand up like a bad thunderstorm was blowing in real fast. Everyone froze, looking south toward the river. “Now what?” Lan said crossly.

There was a distant rumble off to the south, and the prickly feeling of magic rose up all around us like a wave and then fell back. Roger went white to the lips.

“It’s the river,” he said, barely loud enough for all of us to hear. “All the spells we were throwing around — they must have finished destabilizing the magic that’s been piling up along it.”

“Destabilizing —” Dr. Lefevre looked at Roger, and his eyes widened.

Roger nodded. “Eighty-three years’ worth of magic, and it’s about to go pouring down the river like an avalanche down a mountain. It’ll hit the Great Barrier Spell where the rivers come together, and …”

His voice trailed off, but he didn’t have to say anything else. He’d told us what would happen next; it was why we’d sent Mr. Zarbeliev and the others home ahead of us. Only now there was no chance that they’d arrive in time for a warning to make any difference. Even if they got back to Mill City before the wave of magic hit the Great Barrier Spell, there wouldn’t be time to get a warning to St. Louis or New Orleans or any of the other towns along the river.

I remembered some of the accidents that had happened in the practice laboratories at the college, and shivered. If a mistake in a college student’s experiment could punch a duck-shaped hole in every window on the west side of a building, what would eighty years’ worth of raw magic do when it hit something? And what would happen if the Great Barrier Spell collapsed and released all
its
magic?

From the expressions everyone wore, they were all thinking the same thing. Lan looked at Roger. “Can we do anything to stop it?”

Roger licked his lips like they had suddenly gone dry. “No,” he said.