Excantation

by Honor Raconteur

  Klaus stared over the railing toward the bottom doubtfully. “I’d rather not go down. We’re still about halfway up, which means we’d have to climb the same height on the other side.”

  “Veeeery good point.” I nodded in vigorous support of this opinion. “So, not down. Up?”

  “Either that”—Ciarán pointed to the blank wall ahead of us—“or you can create a doorway here and we can walk through to the other side. There should be either an office or another staircase we can use.”

  “Office would be great.” Mostly because an office meant we’d be finally getting somewhere. We were here to hunt for clues, and stairways didn’t have any clues to offer. Offices would improve our odds. “Klaus, is the wall stable enough for a door?”

  “Hmm. I think so. Make sure it has a solid frame around it,” he suggested.

  “Solid frame I can do.” I envisioned the front door to my own house, as that was something I’d seen so often it took no brain power to envision. As I did so, I mentally called upon the universe for good luck. Dear eyelashes, wishbones, dandelions, pennies, shootings stars, and various birthday candles I’ve blown on over the years, do your job.

  The door looked good and solid, so I opened the knob and swept it aside. My anticipation immediately fell flat. I’d never make a wish on birthday candles again.

  More stairs.

  This side of the tower was an improvement over the other for the simple fact that offices branched off on each level. We went in to each one, but they seemed to be cleared out for the most part. The employees had taken the time to pack everything up and haul it off, not leaving much behind but furniture, it seemed. And usually just odd pieces—a chair here, a filing cabinet there, things like that. Nothing helpful, anyway.

  We were on floor 3,622 (to be honest I lost count) when Zoya got on the walkie-talkie.

  “We found controls for the glamour dome,” she reported.

  James’ response was immediate. “So, there is a glamour dome overhead?”

  “Da, but no. It was in place overhead. Now it isn’t. The only thing still operating is for atmosphere.”

  I blinked down at the walkie-talkie. Wait, so that inky darkness overhead was natural? There wasn’t any glamour giving that appearance? But there wasn’t a single light in the sky, not even a star, which meant we weren’t on any terrestrial plane. Uh. So…that left the million-dollar question, I guess.

  “Where are we?” Liam asked plaintively.

  It wasn’t the first time someone asked it, but it was disturbing we still didn’t have an answer to the question. You’d think, after several hours of poking around, someone would catch a clue. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of visitors had tramped through the Hub and never once guessed where it was, either, so maybe it wasn’t that strange.

  “Reagan, anything?”

  I love how Jackson asked that. I mean, seriously, if I had any clue of where we were, I would have been shouting it from the rooftops by now. “We’ve only gone through about a dozen offices at this point, and there’s not much left in them. Furniture, odds and ends, no paperwork. People packed up and left.”

  “Odd,” Aisling noted. “We saw merchandise in some of these windows.”

  “But not much,” James pointed out. “I would imagine it was whatever people couldn’t quickly cart off, or couldn’t fit, that’s what was left behind. The shops would have the worst of it, having so much inventory to move.”

  That could explain why the bigger pieces of furniture were left here in the offices, too. I saw traces of Doors, so I assume they could move things to a certain degree, but moving absolutely everything in a short amount of time just didn’t seem possible. As evidenced by what was left behind.

  James seemed to be thinking aloud as he asked, “Zoya, you said the glamour is off. Was it turned off or destroyed?”

  “Seems to be turned off. The sigils and control panel are still relatively intact, at least. I see no obvious signs of damage. The controls were designed to display a full twenty-four-hour day, complete with a rising and setting sun and cloud cover. It’s incredibly impressive work and obviously not the doing of an Imagineer. A full team of sorcerers would have been needed to pull this off. They even have weather gauges to give a light spring shower if they felt like it.”

  We all let out a low whistle at that.

  “There’s also atmospheric controls to keep the air quality in certain tolerances. I don’t see how this would be necessary if we were anywhere on the material plane.”

  No, I didn’t either. Seriously, where were we? What she rattled off was something I would expect on a space station. No one needed to have full atmosphere control unless they were outside the atmosphere.

  “Zoya,” Jackson requested seriously, “record every bit of that, will you? So I can look at it properly tonight back at Agna’s.”

  “We’re doing so now. Just in case.”

  In case something went drastically wrong while we were trooping around in this creepy place? Yeah, I didn’t blame her on that. Klaus, Ciarán, and I trooped out into the hallway. I paused on the landing of the stairs, looking around uneasily. Seriously, there was something spooky about this place. I couldn’t put my finger on it. There were too many things to put a finger on, really.

  Ciarán noticed and asked, “Something wrong?”

  “I’m just really glad we’re not closer to Samhain, let me say that,” I answered, reluctantly moving toward the stairs again. “This place is creepy as all get out, and being anywhere near October seems like a drastically poor life decision.”

  “It’s not haunted,” Klaus assured me. At least, it should have been a reassurance, but he looked grim and was also eyeing our surrounding walls uneasily. “What you’re sensing is the funhouse effect. Because the perspective of the stairs is changing as we climb, it feels like a warped tunnel, and our senses are constantly reorienting to it. It’s disconcerting and the sensation gets worse the higher up we go.”

  “Oh,” I said faintly. “Lovely. Um, what do you say we ignore the rest of these probably empty offices and go straight up? See if there’s a control room up there or not. I want to get back down as quick as possible.”

  Both men seemed to think this was a good idea. They nodded, and we started going straight up. I didn’t think we had many more stories left to go, maybe fifteen.

  Okay. I may have whimpered when I thought that. I was going to be so, so sore tomorrow. I’d reached that stage where I was already exhausted from next week.

  Through some kind of grace or luck or just sheer determination, we finally reached the top floor. I could actually hear the creaking of the walls now, feel a slight sway. It wasn’t like air pushed the building back and forth, but more like gravity pulled it all to the right. There was a visible tilt to the room. I felt like I was in the tower of Pisa, no joke.

  If this was a control room, it was the strangest one I’d ever seen. The space was large and perfectly round, big enough to jam three minivans inside with room left over. The walls seemed to be nothing but stained glass and mortar framing. I couldn’t see a trace of stone. There were no control boards lining the wall like an aircraft control tower would have. Instead, there was something in the middle, stretched from floor to ceiling, and it looked sort of alive? Like a huge tree, but we only saw the trunk. It didn’t look really like a trunk, though, not quite wood texture. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, to be honest.

  I’d made my round on the tree-like thing so turned to recording what was left of the room. It was actually incredibly beautiful. Each stained-glass window told part of a story. Klaus and Ciarán were busy staring at one and trying to decipher words written into a bottom panel, although I could tell they also listened and tracked my movements. I made sure to keep my form slow and steady so the focus on my phone’s camera didn’t blur as I panned up and down each window.

  Then I returned to staring at the center, because I still had no answer for that.

  “What is that?”
I asked, almost rhetorically.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Ciarán answered slowly. “I traveled once with a druid on their own plane, and they had trees like this.”

  “Oh, so it is a tree?”

  “I think so. It bears a remarkable resemblance, at least.”

  I hit record on my phone again, slowly covering it from every angle. With my other hand, I put the walkie-talkie near my mouth. “Aisling.”

  “Here.”

  “So, I think we’re at the main control tower. And we’re seeing this huge tree-like thing that goes straight up the center of the room? Ciarán says he’s seen something similar to this on the druidic plane.”

  “Does it look very pale, sort of twisted, with a silvery sheen to it?”

  “No silver sheen, but you’re dead on the money for the rest of it.”

  “That, my dear, is a honed Alder Tree. It’s similar to what you see on Earth, but when they’re honed, they’re crafted and grown to be a tether between planes. Ha! I had a feeling we’d find at least one on the Hub somewhere. It only made sense, really. The platforms being tethered as they were, they had to have an anchor. Something to recognize and tether TO, you see. And the only way for a druid to do their work is to tie it into something living, and trees are the best for it.”

  How did I see this huge trunk now and not before? Had the whole building been built to wrap around this thing, so that only the top part of it was visible? Why? What was I even looking at? “So, did they grow this tree in place? We saw no hint of it on the way up here.”

  “My guess is they started its growth on Earth and then moved it here, wherever here is. The building was built around it. Alder Trees are incredibly large once fully mature.”

  Yeah, that part was obvious. I’d just climbed fifty gazillion stairs and still hadn’t reached the top of the tree. I mean, I didn’t see a hint of branches even at the top of the tower, so that said something about the height of this tree.

  James slid into the conversation. “Would the tree continue to grow?”

  “They’re not supposed to. A honed tree is grown to maximum size and then only regenerates itself. It doesn’t grow past that height or girth. It’s what makes them ideal for tethering. Earth trees cause us trouble. We have to renew the tethers every hundred years or so because they change so much in size.”

  Huh. Made sense.

  “Aisling,” Jackson inquired, “are you still certain about the tethers only functioning as a road?”

  “Yes, there’s no if’s about that. They can’t be any other way, really. It would be like asking a paved road to also function as a house. Even with a please and thank you, there’s no way for it to work. Why?”

  “We’re still not seeing any sign of how this place is here. Or where here is.”

  “Hmm. We do need an answer to that. Alright, two ways to possibly ask. Reagan, sweets, put your hand up against the tree’s trunk and see if it will speak to you. It might give you a strong sense of where it is, and we’ll have our answer. If it won’t, then can either you or Klaus make a Door for me? I can just pop over and ask it myself.”

  I didn’t blame her for avoiding those stairs. Although how I was supposed to get a tree to talk to me, I wasn’t sure. Trees had never talked to me before. Or was this such a second-nature thing that druids thought all people could talk to trees? Anyway, game to try if it meant leaving this room faster. The tower still unnerved me on some level.

  Returning to the tree, I put my phone back into my fanny pack and freed up a hand. Then I put my palm flat against the tree’s very smooth bark. It gave a little under the light pressure, which was odd. Or was that my imagination? Either way, no sense of anything. “Aisling, it’s not talking to me.”

  “Try again, hold it for a moment,” she encouraged.

  “Druids,” Klaus despaired, already heading for the doorway, no doubt to create a Door. “They think anyone can talk to trees.”

  Ciarán snickered in front of the window.

  I was with Klaus on this one, but I rolled my eyes and wrapped both arms around the tree. I could at least tell her I tried, even if it did feel weird hugging—

  At that moment, everything went wrong at once. The solid bark against me disintegrated abruptly, as if it had only been a shell of thin papier-mâché this whole time. The entire tree went from being solid and in front of me to nothing but dust in the wind, the entirety of it gone in a split second. Because I’d had to lean into it to get my arms around any of its trunk, I lost my balance. The tree’s girth had been large enough that no windmilling on my part caught the edges of the floor, and I free-fell headfirst into the hole.

  My heart leapt into my throat, panic filling my brain so fast I went dizzy with it. I could hear Klaus and Ciarán screaming my name, but it was in a tunnel effect, air rushing past my ears stealing away most of their voices. I knew precisely how much height I had to fall, having climbed it, and I panicked all over again as I realized there was no way I would survive it. Not freefalling like this.

  I had seconds to react, seconds before I hit the ground or floor or whatever it was beneath me. Instinctively, I threw my hands over my head at the same time I shouted, “WARD!”

  A ward of the thickest, most cushiony substance I could think of wrapped around me from head to toe. It was like a bounce house on steroids. I still fell, though, and could feel myself heading for the ground. I tried to mitigate that fall one more time. “NET!”

  The net was a blind throw on my part, trying to catch the edges of floor below me, something that would catch hold and take my weight. I felt it three seconds later, landing hard despite the padded cushions surrounding me. I hit with a bounce, then hit again, a little softer this time. It jarred me badly enough that I felt nausea welling up inside me in a hot, bitter tide. I tried to swallow it back as I fought my way free of the layers around me.

  The feeling of air on my face told me I was free, but I had no light to see by. It was pitch black down here without even a trace of light. I rolled a little to the side, and that did it. My stomach pitched a fit and I promptly threw up.

  And I didn’t even hear a splatter as it landed. Oh man. Crrraaaap on a stick, that wasn’t good. Just how much further did I have to fall? Could the net hold me? I didn’t even know what I’d caught it on. Did I even dare wiggle and test the limits of my net? I went abruptly still with fear, almost rigid with it.

  “Reagan! REAGAN! God, child, answer me!”

  Klaus. I could hear him through the walkie-talkie, thankfully not damaged in my dramatic fall. I lay still, panting and fighting my still-upset stomach, but pulled it toward my face. I’d never been good with amusement park rides, and that one had been like the worst rollercoaster in the world while under maintenance. In a blizzard. “Here. I’m here.”

  “What’s wrong with Reagan?” Zoya demanded, voice rising.

  Klaus was a brave man. He ignored her. “Reagan, are you alright?”

  “Absolutely sick to my stomach, but otherwise okay.”

  Ciarán had more survival instincts. He explained quickly, the words tripping over themselves, “She fell down a hole, where the tree was. It fell apart when she touched it and she toppled through head first and Reagan, you’re not hurt seriously? How?”

  “Threw a bounce house around myself and a net to catch me. Really glad about the net. I, uh, don’t feel any kind of floor below me.” Here I paused and swallowed hard. I pulled my phone out and turned on the flashlight, shining it in all directions, but all I saw were the rounded edges of the floors above and below me.

  “Reagan, where are you?” Zoya demanded urgently. “How far did you fall?”

  I saw nothing but darkness below and the faint grey of light from above. Literally nothing else. “I don’t know. I wish I could tell you, but I honestly have no idea where I am.”

  “Don’t panic,” Zoya cautioned, tone soothing. “We do know approximately where you are, as you fell straight down. How far down is the question. What hints can y
ou give us?”

  “Not much. The opening above my head is the faintest grey. I can’t even see light, really, just a lighter patch of darkness. I’ve got a lot of open space below me, I can tell you that. Not even a hint of a floor.” I turned my head around carefully, as I still wasn’t sure what the net was attached to. Aside from my willpower. “The walls are this weird striated sort of material? I’m not sure what it is, to be frank. But there’s no openings.”

  “Reagan, can you create a door? Any kind of opening?”

  I think I saw where Klaus was going with this. “You think you can connect a Door to it, pull me out?”

  “I’ll bet I can. I know approximately where you are, and it might take a false try, but I should be able to.”

  I trusted his knowledge on this better than my own limited understanding of how his magic worked. All I knew was that a kobold could reach out to an approximate area, find a doorframe, and connect to it. As long as it was the right shape and in the right general area, their magic would connect the dots. It was likely more complicated than that, but it was how Klaus had explained it to me the time I’d asked.

  “I think I can, but give me a second. I need to create a better floor to stand on. Right now I’m balancing my weight on a net.”

  “Do so,” Klaus encouraged.

  Because I wasn’t messing around, I went with a full steel floor, something that perfectly fit the edges of the round tube I currently found myself in, with mega I-beam supports running underneath it to hold it in place. Only then did I feel like I could breathe properly. With a sigh of relief, I untangled myself fully and stood. My floor didn’t even notice my body weight. Good floor. Floor is friend.

  Since the surrounding wall looked and felt the same, I went with the patch in front of me to create a doorway-ish opening. It had a slight curve to the sides, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. “Klaus, it’s curving on the edges some, is that going to cause trouble?”