Wythcombe tapped his fingers up and down the length of his staff. “Yes and no. That Blind Seer worked such an astonishingly complex piece of shapeshifting magic does show he has a gift for the art—even as Ranz’s city of snow and ice shows that his mastery of cold magic goes far beyond what is usual. Were you about when I explained how magical channels work?”
Laria nodded.
“So, basically, Blind Seer has cut his first shapeshifting channel in a fashion that links him more firmly in the shape of a wolf. From this point forward, his magic will seek to adapt his wolf form. Creating an entirely new form—say a human form—will be harder. Even if he manages to do so, he’s likely to have remnant wolf qualities.”
“You mean like a tail or ears?” Laria asked.
“Maybe. If he’s lucky. Maybe he’ll look sort of hybrid.”
“Maybe,” Firekeeper said, throwing an arm around Blind Seer’s shoulder, feeling the nub of the wing joint beneath her arm. “But this is Blind Seer. As you all say, he is remarkable. I know this better than any of you.”
She leaned against the great grey wolf and added in the language that the two of them shared, “And if you remain with only this form, I will love you no less. Remember that.”
Blind Seer licked the side of her face. “As if I could forget. Why do you think I could shape wings with such ease? For you and for you alone, I can fly.”
By the next morning, Blind Seer was no longer a wingéd wolf. Laria thought about asking why. Had he run out of mana? Had he deliberately changed back? Was he afraid that if he stayed in that new form he might be stuck there? Thinking about it, could he change back to having wings if he wanted?
She wanted to ask, but she didn’t. She hadn’t missed how Blind Seer and Firekeeper had pressed close to each other last night. They might have been acting all matter-of-fact about how close Firekeeper had come to dying, but that didn’t mean they weren’t shaken. Anyhow, today no one was talking much. Not even Arasan was telling stories or singing songs to ease them along the trail. Yesterday’s close brush with the scarlet butterflies had brought home just how dangerous their surroundings were.
Laria repeatedly touched the hilt of her magic sword. When she’d been younger, she’d imagined that having something magical—especially a weapon, although a talisman or ring would have been great, too—would make her feel just about untouchable. Today the sword’s weight at her belt was just a reminder that the world was such a dangerous place that even powerful sorcerers needed weapons.
Over the next several days, they had a few other reminders. The gigantic turtles that disguised themselves as lumpy bits of landscape would definitely have gotten them if Farborn hadn’t been scouting ahead, seen that those boulders moved and possessed really viciously beaked heads. Avoiding the turtles meant they had to ford a gulch so rocky that what flowed through it wasn’t so much water as mist and churning foam. Ranz froze some of the mist into a bridge. The bridge didn’t provide the steadiest of footing though, for so much air was mixed with the water that the ice creaked and crackled with every step.
By unspoken consent, Wythcombe’s great magic was now kept in reserve. Working out more complex routes, being uncomfortable, eating increasingly dry and unpalatable rations was a small price to pay for the knowledge that, if they needed it, Wythcombe should be able to pull off a miracle.
Laria’s world shrank to one gritty trail after another. Even without actively using her talent, she could sense that this region had been seared so that it could not support other than prickly scrub growth, or wriggling and multi-jointed insects. Worse, something had devoured much of the latent life that inhabited even “dead” things like rock and sand.
Late one afternoon, Laria became vaguely aware that the steady crunch of booted feet along the gritty trail had slowed, then halted. She brought herself up short before she walked into Wythcombe’s back to find that they stood on a rise overlooking a plain even more barren than those they had already crossed.
Wythcombe extended his staff and pointed. “There, in the near distance, do you see that hill? The one with the peak shrouded by clouds, that seems to have a ring at its base? That is Mount Ambition. That is where Kabot and his allies have remained trapped these long decades, sealed within the consequences of their folly.”
Laria examined the place that they had come so far to reach. The hill looked more like the sort of “mountain” children made from sand at the beach, conical and evenly rounded. The clouds that covered the peak also looked artificially white and fluffy. The ring at the base of the hill glinted as if it held water. That, at least, was good. It was odd, though, that she didn’t see anything green. She hoped the water wasn’t salt.
When Wythcombe lowered his staff, Laria noticed that the old man’s brow was creased with—worry? No, something else. His eyes narrowed as he studied the distant peak, as if examining something in particular.
“Farborn,” the spellcaster advised, “take special care when you’re scouting. Some complicated magics were put in place to keep chance visitors away. I know how to neutralize those, but it is possible that during my withdrawal from general society, more or different protections were put in place. I would hate if you were to…”
Arasan cut in. “Run afoul of them? Farborn is a bird… A-foul? He’s a fowl.”
As one, everyone turned and stared at him. Laria tried to figure out whether the joke was Arasan’s or the Meddler’s, and couldn’t be certain. Was this sense of humor evidence of the blending of their personalities? Arasan’s desire to amuse mingling with the Meddler’s more caustic nature?
Farborn shrilled a comment which Firekeeper translated. “Wythcombe, Farborn agrees with your warning. He says the air currents feel peculiar, prickly, like but not like when a thunderstorm is gathering.”
“A thunderstorm?” Wythcombe mused. “That is troubling. There certainly aren’t enough clouds for a natural storm. Lightning would be very dangerous, especially in an open area such as this one. Bide. I wish to set a spell to…”
His Pellish became less intelligible, as it often did when discussing magic and the more specialized terminology used by the Rhinadeians came into play. However, Laria gathered that Wythcombe thought he had the means to protect them.
“I would be the last to argue with Farborn’s weather sense,” the spellcaster said some time later, scrubbing sweat from his brow with his sleeve, “but I will admit to being surprised at the presence of lightning magic here. It’s not usually left unsupervised—it’s too dangerous.”
“Could someone be up there?” Ranz asked, indicating the cloud-shrouded peak.
“Perhaps… Unlikely, but perhaps. As you have seen, this is not an easy place to reach.”
“We go see,” Firekeeper urged, “while there is daylight enough. You are ready?”
Taking a swig from one of the flasks at his belt, Wythcombe nodded. Laria was standing close enough that she caught a whiff of something sharp and herbal. She saw from how Firekeeper wrinkled her nose that the wolf-woman had as well. However, Firekeeper did not argue with the old man. Despite the many days they had traveled together, Laria did not feel she could ask him if he was feeling unwell. As a compromise, when they resumed hiking, she dropped to where she could keep an eye on him, without it seeming obvious she was doing so.
Life on the Nexus Islands, on which a tree maybe twice the height of a tall man was considered notable, had accustomed Laria to a world view where the sky and its mirror, the sea, defined the world. Nonetheless, immediately after Firekeeper and Blind Seer led them onto the cracked, sunbaked clay of the plain that surrounded Mount Ambition, Laria felt acutely exposed. She did her best to hide her reaction, but she noticed how Ranz kept casting his gaze up, then side to side.
He caught her watching him, smiled sheepishly, then said softly, “I guess it’s all this talk about lightning, but I feel like a bug on a table.”
“Me, too,” Laria admitted. “I want to run, but what good would that do? There’s no
cover where we’re going. Mount Ambition is as barren as this plain—all except for the clouds on top, right?”
“Right,” Ranz agreed. He raised his voice slightly. “Wythcombe, has it always been so exposed here?”
“It has been,” Wythcombe’s voice was as deep as ever, but held a note of strain. He asked Laria, “Young lady, tell me. Have you attempted to sense this area’s aura?”
Laria shook her head. “I haven’t, because”—she touched her sword— “of what happened with this. But even without trying, I can feel that the land is dead. I don’t know how else to put it.”
“Dead explains it very well,” Wythcombe said, then broadened his attention to include the rest. “This area is ‘dead’ because the magic was drained from it. Do you know anything about volcanoes?”
Ranz blinked at this apparent leap in topics. “Actually, I do, a little. Since fire and ice are in opposition, I thought it was a good idea to learn something about fire as well as ice. Volcanoes occur when the inner heat of the earth comes too close to the surface. What breaks through looks like fire, but it’s actually rock that’s so hot that it’s become liquid—just as ice is water that has become so cold that it’s become solid.”
“Very nicely put,” Wythcombe said. “What you see in front of us is a different type of volcano. Mount Ambition was shaped not by molten rock seeking to rise to the surface, but by sorcery that sought to draw all the magic in the region to one point. The ring at the base is not just a moat but a magical circle intended to contain those stolen magics.”
“So Kabot chose this place because of the magical reservoir?” Ranz asked.
“That and because with the surrounding plains stripped of even passive mana, detecting what he and his associates were about would be more difficult,” Wythcombe said. When Firekeeper made a small noise of inquiry, the spellcaster continued. “Many magics rely upon the passive magical aura of their surroundings. Here, where even centuries after the initial draining the land remains leached of power, any spells sent out from a distance would be sucked in by the dryness.”
“Blind Seer wishes to know,” Firekeeper said, “why was this not fixed by the sorcerers of Rhinadei as part of healing the land?”
Wythcombe looked momentarily offended, then laughed. “Because, dear wolf, this is far from the only place where such things were done. Undoing such magics is complex and must be done gradually. In time, healing this area would have been assigned to some group. There was speculation that Kabot located this area by looking through survey records for information on promising mana surges.”
“So when we reach Mount Ambition,” Arasan said, tugging on Rusty’s lead rope, “we’re in the opposite situation. Rather than moving over a land that has been killed, we’ll be entering a land that is too alive.”
“Precisely,” Wythcombe said. His hand tightened around his staff and his eyes narrowed as he studied the cloud-capped peak, but he volunteered nothing more and no one, not even Firekeeper, seemed willing to press for more information.
Ever since Wythcombe had lectured him regarding consequences, Blind Seer had been trying not to draw upon his magical talent. However, this self-imposed ban did not extend to refusing to use his ability to sniff out magic. That channel, Blind Seer suspected, was well and deeply carved, for even before he had known of his spellcasting talent, he had sought to know his surroundings through his sense of smell—a sense he had unconsciously adapted so that he could sniff out that which he now realized possessed no odor to most.
“What do you smell, sweet hunter?” Firekeeper asked, from where she padded at his side, bow in hand, Wythcombe’s pack over shoulders now fully healed from the injury she’d taken falling into the crevice of the scarlet butterflies.
“Nothing at all,” Blind Seer admitted. “Laria’s talent did not mislead her. This land is dead, not only of magic but even of the insects and serpents one would expect to find where there are so many nooks and crannies. I marvel that any war, no matter how devastating, could have such lasting effect.”
“As do I,” Firekeeper agreed. Then she shifted to Pellish, the language that they were finding suited for most needs, although Ranz and Wythcombe claimed the Nexans spoke with a thick accent and odd inflections. The Nexans were too polite to say the same about how the Rhinadeians spoke, although perhaps this had more to do with their being accustomed to so many different accents, rather than better manners. “Laria says that here the land is dead. Now that we have walked some ways, Blind Seer’s nose says that nothing lives here. Tell us, wise Wythcombe, you must have helped redeem many parts of Rhinadei. Is such utter lack of living, even after the battles are long gone, commonly found?”
Wythcombe’s scent turned acrid, as sweat started out all over his body, but to eyes and ear, he would have appeared perfectly calm. Blind Seer wondered if he would need to challenge the old man to make him reveal what so unnerved him, but after several long strides, Wythcombe sighed.
“Such completeness is very unusual. Even before our ancestors made Rhinadei their refuge, healing was beginning, usually where less tainted elements—say blown dirt and rainwater—created soil that could support some of the more determined plants. Once there are a few plants, then the insects and spiders come. After them come the birds that eat the bugs, but can fly away to safer areas to nest and raise their broods. This complete lack of life troubles me. Perhaps in setting up wards against Kabot and his cohort, my associates diverted what little magic that remained.”
“But their wards would not touch centipedes and ants,” Firekeeper persisted. “Nor crab grass and creeping thorn. Would they?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Wythcombe replied. “As I said, I am troubled—more so now that Blind Seer tells us these plains are indeed devoid of life, rather than that our passage has frightened the creepers and crawlers into hiding.”
Rusty the goat, who had been chewing his cud for lack of anything fresh to eat, belched in what sounded like discontented commentary. The humans laughed uneasily.
“Stay alert,” Wythcombe said, rubbing his forehead as if to forestall a headache, “although I hardly know what to warn you against here where there is nothing, seemingly, to fear.”
They arrived at the broad band of water that moated the base of Mount Ambition without incident. Up close, the moat’s shine proved to be not merely the reflection of the sunlight, but a characteristic of the water itself, which shimmered silver, moving in peculiar patterns as if under the impetus of an inexplicable current. The water smelled no worse than any other body of water, fresher than many, but parched as he was, Blind Seer felt not the least desire to drink it.
“Too broad to leap,” Firekeeper said, “even for Blind Seer, and he is the best jumper among us.”
Ranz looked at the water dubiously. “I could try freezing a bridge, but I’m not certain how well that would work. Master Wythcombe, didn’t you say that this ring is an element in a ward?”
“I did, and I agree with your deduction. If you were to change the water’s nature, you might break or weaken the ward. Or the ward itself might react. Best we not take that risk.”
Although Wythcombe did not directly compliment the young man, the way he spoke to Ranz—peer to peer—caused the young man to straighten in unconscious pride. Blind Seer sat and thumped behind one ear with a hind leg, a posture he often found helped him think.
“I have no desire to swim in that stuff,” Firekeeper said. “Even if it smells of nothing—that is to say, much like fresh water. Yet, if that is the only way…”
She trailed off, dissatisfied, and looked at Blind Seer.
“Yes,” he said in response to her unasked question. “I could shape wings and fly across, but I am new to the art and I am not certain I could ferry each member of our pack before I grew tired. If we could find another solution, that would be best.”
Unasked, Farborn had circled all of Mount Ambition without crossing the moat, and now returned to report that this side was representative o
f all the others.
“Farborn adds,” Firekeeper translated, “that there is a path which winds around the mountain. It is faint enough, but a falcon’s vision is very keen, keen enough to see nearly nothing where there is so little.”
Arasan had remained uncharacteristically quiet—at least for him—as they speculated. Now he glanced over at Wythcombe. “You told us that you had visited here repeatedly. When you came before, you must have had the means to cross this moat.”
“I did,” Wythcombe said, “and do, but those means were designed for one person alone. I had planned to adapt my technique so that I could take all of us across. I can still do this, but I want time to study the changes in the situation. In fact, I am wondering if it would be best for only me—perhaps with Farborn, if he would take the risk—to cross. I could check to make certain nothing has changed. If something happened to me, Farborn could fly back and report to you.”
“And how then would we rescue you?” Firekeeper said, snorting as she did when impatient with humans. “We would be no more suited to cross than we are now. And, no, don’t say anything stupid and human like that you would not expect us to go against what had felled such a powerful and mighty one as you. You already know, if you think, that we would not leave you without trying to save.”
Wythcombe laughed. A human might have wondered if he was sincere, but his scent held nothing but admiration for Firekeeper’s forthrightness. Blind Seer felt very pleased.
Wythcombe said, “And I suppose you would add that it would be pure foolishness for us to come so far, then to leave without checking on Kabot’s situation. I could argue in turn that we have already learned something of value and a larger team could be sent out, but why bother? None of us are the sort to turn back without more evident danger. Very well. We’ve already had a long day’s hike. Let us set up camp here, then essay the crossing come morning. That will give me time to prepare my spells. When I have done so, I will brief you regarding what I will require from you.”
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