Strangehold (Crossroads of Worlds Book 1)

by Rene Sears

  We stopped, and she looked us over, head to toe.

  "Cough," she said. I met Rowan's eye, struck again by how strange he looked as a human, shrugged, and forced a cough. Rowan followed suit. She listened, her head cocked, and then nodded.

  "I'm Tina Mendes. Sorry about that, but we can't have any more sick people in here."

  "How bad is it?" I asked.

  She looked at me, one penciled eyebrow rising up high enough to be lost in her fringe.

  "We've been underhill a couple of days," I told her. The other eyebrow joined the first. "It's a long story. Is Jake here?"

  "Who did you say you were?"

  "Morgan Tenpenny."

  She dialed a number, an old handheld set cradled between her shoulder and her ear, eyes never leaving me except to flick to Rowan. She mumbled into the phone, nodded, and set it down.

  "Go on back," she said. "You know where his office is?"

  "I know where Eliza's office is."

  "Then you know where his office is." She watched us, eyes narrowed, as we walked past her. Rowan stepped a little closer to me, and even amidst this grimness, I wanted to smile. Yath hounds and rivers of blood, a-okay. Grumpy receptionist, not in his wheelhouse.

  I braced myself as we came to the end of the hall. I liked Jake, but it had been Eliza behind this door since we were in our late twenties—she'd been so proud of getting there so young—and I'd expected it to be her for another couple of decades at least. I swallowed hard, rapped my knuckles against the glass and waited.

  The door swung open. I barely recognized Jake. He was a kid in my memory, with the slenderness of youth and the bulk of someone who hit the weights on a regular basis. But now, his face was haggard, his eyes were rimmed with red, and he had dropped maybe ten pounds that he didn't have to spare. He hooked an elbow in front of his face and coughed.

  "Sorry," he gasped. I heard the phlegm in his voice, thick and rumbling.

  "We have an idea about how to treat this," I said without preamble.

  "You're..." He sucked in a cautious breath to keep himself from coughing. "...not a doctor."

  "I know. But Jake, this isn't a disease. It's a spell."

  His fingers clenched, and he waved us to a seat by Eliza's—by his desk. "How do you know?"

  I pulled the bracelet from my pocket and held it in the flat of my palm. "I found this at Helen Oshiro's house. Look." I told him about Helen's house, showed him the intact ward against disease and the shattered wards against dangerous spells. "I know Saranya would be the better person to consult if this really was a disease," I finished. "But I'm pretty sure it's not, and I'm what you've got."

  He nodded slowly, and raised bloodshot eyes to meet mine. "All right, you've got your first case." He spread his arms wide. "Go to town."

  Now was as good a time as any. I rolled my shoulders back, enjoyed the sound of my spine popping, and summoned the silvery layer of spellsight to take a closer look. I had only looked at Helen for a moment, repulsed by the burrowing spell lines, afraid of infection—and that was certainly still a risk; just because this wasn't a disease per se didn't mean it couldn't kill me—but now I believed that I could figure it out, and that belief made all the difference. As I had seen in Helen, silver worms of his own magic writhed in and out of Jake's body. My instinct was to flinch away, but I made myself look at what they were doing. That they were attacking his lymph nodes was obvious, but I looked closer.

  Strands of silver wrapped through the flow of magic through his body. Usually the magic of one's own body stayed beneath the skin, layered in blood and bone. What the worms were doing to him was beyond me, but they dipped in and out of him. They didn’t seem inclined to come out of his body, even when I put my hand directly in their path, ignoring Rowan's faint hiss at my recklessness. With my caster's sight trained on Jake, I sifted through the rush of magic. I wanted to trace the worms to their source. I searched from the follicles of his head to the nails on his toes, and everything in between. On my second slow pass, I saw it.

  Lodged in the flow of energy from his heart was an infinitesimally tiny knot. My lips stung as the blood fled from my extremities, seeking solace in my own heart. I knew this knot, as intimately as I had known Eliza's magic. It was derived from Marcus's teaching, but tailored over time to its caster. I had never thought to see it again. Matthew.

  I chased the silver-thread ends of the knot and started patiently unpicking. There was no use rushing—that would only pull it tighter, and make Jake sicker. I could see where I needed to go; it was just a question of taking my time to get there so I didn’t hurt him. Worse than the knot itself was the cold anger frozen in my chest. I would have to retrace the trail of the knot—if I could—but I already had my suspicions, and they felt like certainties.

  Rowan had boosted my power at Helen's house, and I had drawn off Strangehold's energy after that. Every other poor bastard had drawn magic from a leyline.

  The last thread holding the knot together dissolved. The silver lines wriggling through Jake fell away. As that power released him, he reached instinctively for the leylines.

  "Stop!" I said. Jake and Rowan both looked at me. "Don't use the leylines," I said. "It's a spell, right, but it's been spreading like a disease. What if the vector of transmission is the leylines?"

  Jake swore, and it turned into a cough. He already looked better—his face less haggard, his eyes less red—but it would take time for him to heal. "We have to spread the word," he said. "I have to tell everyone—"

  "Yes," I said. "They have to know. No one can use the leylines until we figure this out. Who's still healthy that can help me with the sick people? Are they here, or are they in hospitals?"

  "Tina," he said immediately. "There are a few other healthy people here. You need to help Saranya next. Eliza—" His face crumpled, but then he shook his head and kept going. "Eliza called her here early on. We've set up some of the apartments upstairs as sick rooms, but she can get in to the hospitals to help the people who are there."

  "Right." I glanced at Rowan, who nodded.

  "I'll help as long as I can," he said quietly, and glanced toward the window.

  The next several hours were not pleasant ones. With every knot I untied, I grew more certain, and angrier. Rowan helped me for a while, but as the sun set, he murmured an excuse to Jake and left to undertake his transformation somewhere private. I kept going. I drained my tattoos dry, until I felt limp as a wet handkerchief and a headache pulsed around my temples. Jake brought me some objects of power that had been stored in the Association's attics, and I pulled those dry as well. It was crippling to be unable to use the leylines, and I reached out to them automatically and had to pull myself back a dozen times.

  Saranya was the first person I—healed was the wrong word; broke the spell on—after Jake. She rested, watching, for perhaps an hour, as I untied the knots on the next four people. Then she helped me until she could see what to do. Jake sent Tina to the vaults for more magical artifacts we could drain. Saranya left after a while, taking some with her, headed to the closest hospital. She needed to rest, but I didn't try to stop her. We both knew people would die if we delayed.

  By midnight, every sick person in the Association building was at least free from the knot and on the mend, though only time would truly bring healing, and I was starving, exhausted, and my head pounded. Jake had been watching me work, and had felt well enough to help with the last few. I was confident that he could un-knot sufferers himself, and show other people how to do it. The problem now was that we were running out of artifacts to drain, and we couldn't use the leylines until we were sure they were safe. I'd even drained the remaining charms on Helen's bracelet. I couldn't think that she'd have minded.

  We sat down to peanut butter sandwiches, and in my case a couple of ibuprofen. I rubbed the skin beneath my eyes. It felt puffy. Jake was looking better than he had been, but neither of us were in great shape.

  "Do you think we'll be able to find anything else
to drain tomorrow?"

  Jake nodded, half-staring into the distance, maybe running down some mental inventory. "It won't be enough," he said, "but it'll be something. I'll put a call out, see if anyone can donate from their personal collections."

  "I'm going to Savannah," I said. "If this started there, then maybe we can stop it there. If this does originate in the leyline, and we can clear it, then we'll be able to help people that much faster. I can be there tomorrow."

  "That's a long trip," Jake said. "You need to sleep at some point."

  "I can sleep on the plane," I lied. Going through Strangehold could get me there fastest, but I couldn’t tell Jake about it. It was Hawthorn's place to reveal it—or Rose's, I supposed.

  He set his half-eaten sandwich down and rubbed his eyes. "When we thought this was a disease, that was bad enough, but if it's a spell, someone set it." His bloodshot eyes searched my face. "Do you know who did this?"

  My own appetite had fled, but he had to know. This was a secret I didn't need to keep—shouldn't keep. If I ran into trouble looking for the source of the spell, then someone else would have to follow through. "Eliza and I were apprenticed to Marcus Grey at the same time. The other student was called Matthew March." Jake's eyes widened. "Of course you've heard of him. Well, when he was exiled, they sent him to a little island off South Carolina, which is—"

  "Not far from Savannah." He bit his lower lip. "Eliza told me about him. But this is all supposition."

  "Not all." I took a swallow of tepid, bitter coffee. "I worked with him as a student enough to recognize the way he casts. I'm pretty sure the knot is his work. It's why I think he used the leyine. He can't set foot on the mainland, but he could do something to the leyline where it follows the river."

  "Why would he do this?"

  "I don't know. It's been almost twenty years since I saw him, and I never knew him as well as I thought I did. At a guess, I'd say he's pissed about being exiled."

  Jake let his head fall forward and rest on his forearms. "Do you really think you can find what he did?"

  "Only one way to find out." I massaged my temples. The headache was beginning to recede. "If I don't come back, send Saranya, yes? I think she's seen his spells before."

  "Come back, Morgan." He attempted a smile. "Someone's going to have to help me refill all the stuff we've drained."

  So right after dawn, after far too little sleep, Rowan and I retraced our steps to the bridge in Central Park, and from there to Strangehold.

  We barely took the time to say hello to the twins and Hawthorn. I explained the situation as best I could while refilling my tattoos in the workroom, the easy flow of power a luxury after New York, aware that the words were tumbling out too fast. Rowan interjected here and there to clarify a point. When I was done, Hawthorn stood and started to pace.

  "Abominable," she said. "Simply abominable. Of course you must find the source of it and stop it. And I must help as I may. No, Rose," she addressed the air. "It isn't to be thought of. I will simply go disguised. I shall be perfectly safe. The queen is unlikely to send forth her minions when she has shut the gates underhill so thoroughly. You say this young man Jake is the person I ought to contact?"

  "No," I said. "I mean, you can, but if you can find Dr. Saranya Ramachandran, she could best direct you. We will all truly appreciate your help."

  "Pish tosh," she said. "I would have to be made of stone to ignore such dire need when I could help. You young ladies will have to look after Rose for me until I get back," she said to Igraine and Iliesa.

  "We will," said Igraine, and they both nodded.

  "I like her," Iliesa added softly.

  "And she likes you." Hawthorn smiled. "Well. Let me gather my things. Good luck, Morgan. I hope you clear the leyline of this contamination with all possible haste."

  "Me too," I muttered.

  *

  The drive from Atlanta to Savannah is boring. Once you pass Macon, there's miles and miles of nothing much but farms—and I say that as someone who lived in the middle of nothing much but farms. The highway was straight and flat and went on and on, interrupted only by the occasional gas station or restaurant. We stopped at one of the former to gas up and get coffee—we weren't quite on empty yet, but it was a long way between gas stations. I'd had to pay an exorbitant fee to get the truck out of parking in Atlanta, but at least it let me know how long we'd been in Strangehold and Faerie: five days. How many people had died in that time?

  Savannah came up suddenly after hours of driving; a couple of billboards gave warning of restaurants and beaches ahead, and then buildings appeared where there had only been trees. From the highway it wasn't far to the river, past brick buildings. We parked by River Street. The street was almost empty, and a lot of the stores were closed. I bought a map at a shop full of tourist crap from a man wearing a surgical mask and blue latex gloves. We sat on a bench and looked at the map.

  "The biggest leyline follows the river for a while, so it makes sense that whatever he did is somewhere along the river." I followed the map with my finger. The river was interrupted by several islands, Tybee Island being the biggest. "He was exiled never to set foot on the mainland, so I don't think we'll find it here. I think we'll find it somewhere along here." I traced the coast of Tybee with my finger.

  "What's this?" Rowan leaned over the map, examining a little x marking a spot.

  "That's the lighthouse," I said. The lighthouse stood on the farthest point out toward open water. If one were cursed not to set foot on the mainland and concerned about exactly where that curse kicked in, this looked like the least risky place to try. It was a start, anyway.

  "There's a feygate close by." Rowan tapped the map. "Right here where the leyline and the river run apace."

  "Where the leyline first crosses the coastline."

  We exchanged a look, then I stood and pulled him to his feet after me.

  It was a pretty drive, at least. There were great oaks dripping with Spanish moss, beautiful old buildings, some restored to former grandeur, some dilapidated, waterways with a few boats moored along piers, and a seemingly endless sea of reeds. A looming feeling of dread hung over me, though; not a presentiment of failure, exactly, but a fear of what we'd find where the land met the water. I had a hunch we had the right spot. I couldn’t reconcile a man who would spread this plague with the man I had known twenty years before, but then, I hadn't understood the attack that got him exiled, either.

  A memory: Matthew and I cataloging items in the Association storage, aka the attic. It had been a brilliant day early in September. The attics were stuffy and dusty. We'd propped open a window, and the occasional puff of outside air cooled my sweaty skin. Marcus and Eliza had gone to pick up lunch, and Matthew and I were still working desultorily while we waited for them to come back.

  Matthew was scrying some of the uncatalogued items—showing off; he was much better at scrying than me, and could tell whether they were magic or just junk, and even pick up some of the history of the things. I had a ballpoint pen and a printout on dot matrix paper to match to each item. I was peeling off the perforated edges when Matthew's voice floated out from behind a box in the corner of the attic.

  "Oh ho, what's this?" He came out, holding a long gilt box tied with what appeared to be a piece of velvet theater curtain, faded along the top where sunlight had bleached it.

  I ran the cap of my pen down my list and stopped at one decorative silver dagger in a gold box. "I have a guess, but let's open it and see. You have a cobweb in your hair."

  He set the box by my feet and ran his hands briskly through his hair. "As long as I don't have the cob, I'll be all right." He tugged at the velvet tie and pried the lid off the box. A silver dagger gleamed against more velvet. Matthew sent a tentative tendril of magic to it, and it roared to life, energy humming through it. It was years until I would have my own sidheblade, but I knew what it was. Matthew did too; his face tightened with surprise. "What's it doing wasted up here?" he said.
<
br />   "Well, since the peace, I guess no one's gone hunting the fae." Sidheblades were made of silver from Faerie and forged by fae smiths who imbued them with spells so that they changed shape according to their wielders' need. Cold iron remained the best way to really ruin a fae's day, but sidheblades were a close second, and much easier to hide; when they were inert, they didn't show up to fae sight the way cold iron did. Until a sidheblade changed into a sword or spear or whatever, it looked like normal silver. A few of them had been gifted to favored humans and a few of them had been stolen, but they were very rare overhill. I wondered how long this one had been miscataloged and forgotten. "We'll have to tell Marcus about it."

  "I'll do it," Matthew said casually, and dropped the lid back on the box. "I never thought I'd see one—wish we could put it in a museum." He smiled, and I put a tick next to the line on my printout. We started looking for the next thing, a silver chalice of unknown origin, and I'd forgotten the exchange until much, much later, when Matthew stabbed the queen's nephew with the stolen sidheblade.

  Tybee Island was beautiful and empty. We parked beside a white sand beach gleaming gold in the afternoon sun. The lighthouse loomed over the sand, an angular building painted black and white. I walked to the water, then turned back and looked at the lighthouse. I let my vision blur and brought forward my spellsight. Lines of silver fell like vines creeping toward the leyline—from the top of the lighthouse tower. The uneasy feeling I'd had in the car returned.

  "Do you see?" Rowan asked quietly.

  I nodded. We walked together around the base of the lighthouse until we found the door. According to the signs, there were ordinarily tours of the lighthouse, but the lighthouse and its accompanying museum were closed indefinitely, I presumed due to sickness. I looked around, but there was no one about but us; even the little restaurant by the beach was closed.