A Green Magic

by Alix Hadden

  "So," Kir said. "Tell us what the hell you've been doing."

  "I didn't realise it was going to be like that," Matt said, looking around at them nervously. "I didn't -- okay, right, power from plants, right?"

  Kir and Ali both nodded, cautiously.

  "So, I was thinking about it, and about the Victorian stuff about ground-energy, and I thought, why not from earth? Why don't we do that? Especially when the Victorians did? Why's that been lost?"

  "I'm beginning to think we might know," Kir muttered.

  Matt didn't seem to hear him. "I mean, where do plants get their power from?"

  "The sun?" Ali suggested.

  "Well, yes, partly. But there's microbiotic life in the earth, stuff that's a lot like tiny plants. It's all closely related."

  "It's there, of course it's there, but you can't get at it, right?" Ali said. "Or, we don't."

  "Exactly. It seemed to me like we must be missing something, like it really should be available. So I started looking through my archives, and other people's archives, for ideas, to see what I could find about ground-magic." He rolled his eyes. "There's a lot about various less salubrious forms of animal experimentation, and of course there's the death magic stuff. But it took me a long time to find anything about the earth. And then it was taking about leylines."

  "You said there wasn't anything!" Kir said indignantly.

  "Of course I did," Matt said, impatiently. "I didn't want to -- I was going to shut it down, by then. I was hoping I'd get it sorted before you had to know any more about it."

  "Nice work," Ali said, rolling her eyes. "You certainly managed that -- oh no, wait, the other thing."

  "So. Leylines," Kir said.

  "I came across references to leylines in some of the older books, when I was looking for something else. I dismissed it at first, of course I did. I mean, leylines, right? Clearly nonsense. But then I thought -- what if 'leylines' was a name for a way mage energy is concentrated in the earth? And we'd just, I dunno, kind of stopped noticing it, in favour of looking at the plant energy?"

  "So you found a leyline?" Kir asked. It was hard not to sound sceptical, but clearly he'd fond something; that glowing puddle out there was pretty clear evidence of that.

  "I looked at some maps," Matt said. "There's a lot of disagreement, but I found a couple that nearly everyone agrees on. So I went out to one of those, where it crossed Regent's Park, late at night, and dug a hole into it to see if I could feel anything. I thought if I got my hands right down in there, I'd be more likely to feel it, you know?"

  He paused.

  "Well?" Ali asked impatiently.

  Matt shrugged. "It was -- there was something there, right enough, but I couldn't get at it. And I tried all damn night. I was out in the park, though, you know? Surrounded by plants, and the energy from them kept kind of getting in the way, trying to barge in. Then when I looked at all the books again, they had various ideas for using the energy, but in all honesty they weren't that well developed either. Which I suppose might be why the knowledge fell out of our working ideas, if you see what I mean? It just doesn't work all that well."

  "Looks like it's been working well enough," Kir said through his teeth.

  "Not in a usable way, though," Zach put in, and Kir blinked over at him. "Unless Matt's been using it as well, it's just been popping up and harrassing you, right?"

  "I haven't used it," Matt said, visibly swallowing the word 'yet' at the end of the sentence.

  Ali was chewing on the cuticle of her thumbnail. "But the mud-things can't just be about the leylines themselves. Or they'd be happening all the damn time, if you're right that these really are there, just kind of hanging around. You didn't get at them, so you didn't change anything. It must be something about that thing out there."

  "I'm getting to that," Matt said. He looked more cheerful than he had earlier. He always had liked explaining things, Kir reflected. "So, right, energy yes, way to use it no. So then I wondered, what about where two of them cross? Wouldn't that have extra energy? The trouble is, the reason people get aerated about leylines is because you can draw lots of patterns of the damn things where they intersect at places like the Tower of London, or Brompton Cemetery, or wherever."

  "Places where you can't exactly go digging," Kir said.

  "Precisely. The only one I could find was here. And when I came along here, lo and behold, they were in the process of digging a bloody big hole here. Which made it kind of perfect, right? So I broke in one night, a couple of weeks ago, and went to have a look at the point where the lines were crossing."

  "What were you intending to do?" Kir asked.

  Matt shrugged. "I was going to bury a -- let's call it a catcher, or an agglomerator, or something."

  "Let's think of a better name," Ali muttered, but she was listening intently.

  "Assuming that I was right and that the energy was more focussed here. But then when I got here, I dug down a bit, a few feet maybe, right in the middle. And there it was, this, this thing, just sitting there. It felt like -- I couldn't feel anything in it, at the time, but I could feel something sucking power in. I guess you felt it too, around the site? So I figured, it's only just been unearthed. Maybe it's, kind of, charging up, now. Whatever it is. I decided I'd leave it, come back in a bit, see what was going on. See if I could find any more information, and just make sure I got back before they started pouring concrete. But then you told me there were problems around here. I thought -- but I was sure it couldn't be anything to do with me. The thing was pulling in power, right? Not expending it. But then, when you said about the leylines," Matt spread his hands, "I realised I had to come down here and dig it up."

  "So where is it?" Kir demanded, looking at Matt's empty hands. "In your pocket? What did you do with it?"

  Matt blinked up at him. "I couldn't dig it up. It wouldn't let me."

  Kir got a cold, sick feeling in his stomach. From the look of her, Ali was having the same thought.

  "Leaving aside the bit where I actually came and asked you about this, and either you didn't choose to tell me, or you were thick enough that it didn't occur to you that all this stuff might be relevant fucking information -- you're telling me that you didn't actually get whatever it was out of there?"

  Matt shook his head. "Well, no. But surely, if water washes the things away, it'll work on the source, as well?"

  "Well now," Ali said. "My first question would be: how often did it rain, between when you saw it down there and now? Because if the answer is other than 'never', I'm guessing that the bloody thing is waterproof."

  Matt looked at them a bit blankly. "You mean -- it's still working?"

  "Well you haven't given me any reason yet to believe that it's not!" Ali said.

  "Er. Guys." Zach was standing by the window, looking down. "You should probably come and take a look here."

  They all got up. Kir stumbled slightly -- three chocolate Hobnobs weren't apparently enough to compensate for what he'd pulled out of himself down there. Not really a surprise.

  He stood behind Zach, letting himself crowd a bit closer to Zach's warm back. Zach leant back into him, but both of them were focussed on looking down, at the building site.

  The middle of it was a big puddle of mud. For a moment Kir thought it was just reflecting the orange glow of the London sky; then he realised. The centre of it was still glowing.

  "Oh. Oh dear," Matt said.

  "It's still there," Ali said, her voice flat. "What in the hell are we going to do about it?"

  "You're not doing anything," Kir said. "You nearly knocked yourself out down there already, and you're hardly fit to wade into a bloody great muddy pond."

  "Because wading over to it and just yanking it out is going to work?" Ali demanded. "You are a prize idiot, Kir. What do you think Matt was doing?"

  "Were you just trying to pull it out, Matt?" Kir demanded, turning to face him.

  "Um. Yes." Matt's eyes flickered sideways.

  "You're
lying," Zach said. "I know sod all about magic, but I know a guilty look when I see one."

  "Well, it was going to be wasted, right?" Matt said, sounding pleading. "It's been down there, it might have been working. I thought, since I needed to take it out, I ought to try it out first. Try to discharge it a bit."

  "You were trying to use it?" Ali said.

  "Just to test it, before I moved it," Matt said. "I mean, if it worked then, but not after I moved it, that would be good to know, wouldn't it? There seemed to be no point in ruining the experiment altogether, even if I was stopping it early."

  "Stopping it early and also you didn't have any idea how it started," Ali muttered.

  "Well, at least I have a better idea now of what triggered the mud-thing," Kir said. "So I can go down and get it, and not do that."

  "On your own?" Ali demanded.

  Kir shrugged. "Well, I'm not about to trust that one," he nodded at Matt, who was still staring down into the building site, "and like I said, you're not fit."

  "I am fit!" Ali said irritably, then undermined her own argument by nearly overbalancing herself.

  "It's a puddle," Kir said. "You can't get through it safely on that leg. So. That leaves me."

  "And me," Zach said. His tone was mild, but Kir could feel his tension.

  "I'm not risking you," Kir said.

  "I didn't know it was your decision," Zach said.

  They glared at each other.

  "It's totally unpredictable magery down there," Kir said. "If I don't know what I'm facing, I don't see that I can ask you to deal with it."

  "You're not asking," Zach said. His arms were folded. "I'm volunteering. Of my own accord."

  Ali sighed noisily. "Kir. How about we rope you up and Zach hangs onto the rope?" She turned to Zach. "That would honestly be useful, Zach. I can't do that either, Kir's right, and I don't want to trust it to shit-for-brains over there. You'd need to be far enough back to be out of the immediate, um, splash-zone, though, right? Otherwise you're not any good -- anything that took him out would take you out as well."

  "That would be okay," Kir said, against every instinct that told him not to risk Zach at all. "And you're right, Ali, it's a good idea."

  "Fine," Zach said. "But if you're doing something stupid, I reserve the right to come down there to help."

  "Then you wouldn't be any use as emergency rescue," Kir said.

  "So don't do anything stupid," Zach said, and bared his teeth at Kir.

  "Fine. Fine. Matt, I'm going to need to know everything you can tell me about what the hell you thought you were doing here. Starting with what it is that's the focus down there, the thing that's glowing."

  Matt looked shifty. "I don't know," he said.

  "What the hell do you mean, you don't know?" Ali demanded.

  Kir took a long breath. "What does it look like?"

  "I'm -- not quite sure," Matt said slowly. "It looks a bit like a bundle of sticks, except that sticks would surely have rotted down there. And there's stones under there too, I think. It flared when I tried to touch it, this time. It didn't do that before."

  "But what if it just -- how did you know you were going to be able to get it out safely?" Kir asked.

  "I didn't," Matt said. "But I thought it was worth a go, right?"

  Ali was sitting back, looking thoughtful. "Do you know when they're pouring concrete?" She looked at Kir. "What if we just let that happen? Matt found it, he didn't put it there -- so this thing's been buried down there for ages, and it's not done any harm before. Can't we just leave it there? Surely it can't achieve anything through several tonnes of concrete?"

  It was tempting, Kir had to admit. The idea of just burying it and being done with it. But...

  "Matt said it flared when he touched it," he said. "Which makes me think that there might be a difference between lying undisturbed for however long, and suddenly being disturbed. By a mage, not a bulldozer, I mean. And -- look, you were close to it just now. Do you want to bet that a few tonnes of concrete is enough? What if it isn't? What if it blows the whole place up?"

  "What if it blows you up while you're digging?" Ali countered.

  Kir shrugged. "If I have to deal with another mud-thing...sooner or later it's going to win, right? I mean, look at your arm. It's been close, several times. I can't keep -- we can't keep -- being lucky. We have to risk getting rid of the source. Somehow."

  There was silence for a moment.

  "You said you were going to dig it up," Zach said to Matt. "We're going to need your spade."

  "I've got a trowel," Matt corrected, sounding a little sulky, but he pulled a trowel out of his messenger bag.

  "Right then," Zach said, turning to Kir. His grin was sunny. "I guess it's time to go dig up an ancient magic artefact."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In an ideal world, Kir would have a proper climbing harness. In this one, he did the best he could with the end of the rope, wrapping it snugly around him and tying a bowline.

  "You can take it round your waist to make it a bit more secure for belaying," he told Zach, demonstrating by wrapping the rope around Zach's waist.

  Zach raised an eyebrow and leant into him slightly. "Maybe we should experiment further with this some other time soon," he said.

  Kir flushed bright red. "That -- is certainly something we could discuss," he said, a little hoarsely, and Zach laughed, and leant forwards a little more to brush a kiss over his lips.

  It wasn't exactly belaying, of course. It wasn't a hole, as such, it wasn't the edge of a cliff, it was just a big dip in the ground, with some weird thing of unspecified power at the bottom of it. That Kir was going to dig out. But really the rope was...a precaution that he was extremely happy to have, that was what it was.

  He hefted Matt's trowel in his hand. "Right then," he said. "Let's go."

  They went down the slope together, him and Zach, Zach a step or two back. After some debate, they'd agreed that Zach would stop by the JCB, still firmly settled in the edge of the puddle of mud, and Kir would go on from there. Ali had suggested having the hose to hand, which Kir had agreed seemed sensible for emergencies; but there was more than enough mud and water down there already to make digging this thing out plenty hard enough, without adding more unless it really was essential.

  It was more alarming than he'd expected when they got to the JCB. The dark didn't help. He could see, well enough, what he was doing -- it never got properly dark in London, with the street-lights -- but everything was just that bit more shadowy, that bit harder to be sure what you were seeing.

  "Right," Zach said. "This is me. Good luck, yeah?"

  "If I yank on the rope twice, pull me out," Kir said.

  "And three times if you want me to come down," Zach said.

  "That would obviate the whole need for the rope," Kir said. "I won't be doing that."

  Zach shrugged. "But I feel better to have a signal for it, okay? Humour me."

  "Fine," Kir said. "Three yanks to get you to come down."

  He badly wanted to hug Zach, to get Zach to hold him just once more -- but that was absurd. He was going to be fine. He was going to sort this out, and come back up again, and then take about a week off to stay in bed with Zach. It wouldn't be much longer now.

  "See you," he said, instead, and started further into the puddle.

  It was steadily wetter going underfoot as he started down; and there was a mist twisting up off the water which combined with the dark to make it even harder to see what was happening. After a few steps, he turned and couldn't see Zach any more, just the rope going off into the mist. He could feel the gentle pressure of Zach paying out the rope in response to Kir's movements. Zach was still there. It was fine. Kir turned and kept walking.

  It hadn't been as far down as this before, he was sure. But he was still walking downwards, which meant he still must be heading into the centre of the pit. Magery could do funny things with time, and with your perception of time. Kir kind of hated that. And the m
ist was settling on his sleeves, his breath hanging in the air in front of him. He set his teeth and walked on.

  Another couple of steps on, and he started to see the orange glow. It was stronger this time than before; strong enough that it might have been visible even in the daylight. It shone off the droplets of mist, the ones in the air in front of him but also the ones clinging to him, so he too was enveloped in orange light. It made it even harder to tell how far he was from anything; it felt like being suspended in a timeless space. The hair on the back of his neck was beginning to tingle, and his gut was getting the feeling that told him that there was magery nearby. Strong magery. Something that wasn't broadcasting itself, like that time he'd been in a real honest-to-God forest, and everything around him had pumped mage-energy into the world until he felt giddy. This was the other thing; this was trying to pull energy from him, and not quite managing to do anything only because it couldn't quite get a grip on him. He shivered.

  Two more steps and there it was, right in front of him. A hole in the ground, and something glowing that deep orange at the bottom of it. His bones were resonating, just slightly. He stopped and crouched down right at the edge of the hole, peering down into it, and wished for better light.

  He could see why Matt had struggled to describe it. A bundle of sticks, maybe, but there was stone in there too. And a sense of roots, going into the earth. He scowled. If it really had roots, would he even be able to dig it up? What happened if you severed the roots of what was more a piece of magery than an actual plant? Kir was willing to bet that it wasn't anything particularly enjoyable. And yet -- leaving this here wasn't going to lead to anything enjoyable, either.

  He took a deep breath, leant forwards, and shoved the trowel into the ground.

  He was thrown backwards, and landed on his back in the mud with a bone-jarring jolt.

  Shit.

  Kir picked himself up, and went back to the edge of the hole, finding the trowel in the mud as he went. He wasn't daft enough to try that again. Obviously, the thing didn't want to be dug up. But in that case -- could he somehow wrap it with his own magery? There was nothing around, just like before, nothing that he could draw on. He didn't dare try to draw on the thing itself; he had no idea what would happen if he did that at all, still less the kind of feedback loop he might generate by trying to damp it with its own power, mediated by his.