Papa explained all of this as we walked up the east half of the bridge toward the shimmer in the air that marked the place where the Great Barrier Spell was. I tensed up as we got closer. I’d been through the spell quite a few times by then, but I never liked it much. It always made me feel as if something old and strong and opinionated was looking me over to see if I was worth letting through.
This time, though, the feeling I got from the spell was a lot weaker and didn’t last anywhere near as long. I frowned, and as soon as we were through, I asked Papa about it. He gave me a sharp look, then said, “The spell is strongest at the surface of the river. We’re a good twenty feet above that, at least.”
I nodded. Everybody knew the Great Barrier Spell didn’t go up forever. Birds flew over it all the time, and there’d been a steam dragon once that did the same thing when I was fourteen. I’d always thought of the spell as a wall, though — something that went up good and solid until you got to the top of it and it stopped. I’d never thought about it being like the river, deep and hard to get through in some places, but getting shallower and easier to walk in if you went out to the edge.
“Does that mean that wildlife could get through the Great Barrier if they came over the bridge?” I said after a minute.
“The spell is still there, just as it is at the thin spot,” Papa said. “And any wildlife would have to get through the protection spells around West Landing and then through all of the town and its magicians to reach the bridge. I doubt it’s anything to worry over.”
“Why are you worrying about it at all?” Lan asked. “It’s not going to matter to us for at least two years.”
“I was just wondering,” I said, but I didn’t stop frowning. Papa hadn’t really answered my question — or had he? The thin spot was the place up north where the Great Barrier Spell cut across land so as to get from the top end of the Mammoth River over to the Great Lakes and from there down the St. Lawrence Seaway. Wildlife did come through it, though not often; that was why the Settlement Office kept extra magicians in the lumber camps and settlements even on the east side of the spell. If the Great Barrier Spell was the same on the bridge as it was at the thin spot, then wildlife could get through it here, the same way it did there.
I thought about it some more and decided that Papa was right; it wasn’t anything to worry about. Most wildlife didn’t like being around too many people, and West Landing was the biggest town on the west bank north of West St. Louis. What with all the people and protection spells, there hadn’t been a wildlife incident since a lone prairie wolf had been spotted at the edge of town two or three years back. Nothing dangerous was likely to get anywhere near the bridge, much less cross it.
Still, I found myself thinking more about the Great Barrier Spell than about the expedition as we walked through West Landing. I’d taken it for granted all my life, but now I wondered. It was a powerful spell, tied to two rivers and the Great Lakes to keep it working even after all the magicians who’d helped cast it were gone, but no spell lasts forever. What would happen if — when — the Great Barrier Spell came down?
The west bank of the river was getting to be more like the east bank as people settled all along it. I’d seen that for myself when we walked the mammoth up one side of the river and down the other. Maybe by the time the Great Barrier fell, there wouldn’t be any wildlife close enough to cause trouble. Or maybe the settlers in the West would have invented new spells so that the Great Barrier wouldn’t be needed. I snorted. Somehow, I doubted that would happen.
By then we had reached the spot where the expedition was collecting. We weren’t the first to arrive, but we weren’t the last, either. Lan and I hugged Papa again, then went to saddle our horses and pack our carrypacks away. Then we had to split up to be with our groups, me with the scientists, Lan with the exploration-and-survey people. I was half expecting a lot of last-minute errands, but Mr. Corvales and Adept Alikaket and Captain Velasquez had everything running smooth as a brand-new pocket watch.
At ten sharp, I heard a whistle and a bugle call. I checked my rifle and mounted up as the first group of riders — army people and the first half of the exploration group — started moving. Lan and Wash and Roger were there, along with Mr. MacPhee, the minerals expert. Then came the nine members of the scientific party — Dr. Lefevre and Mr. Melby, Professor Ochiba and William, Professor Torgeson and me, Mr. Gensier and Mr. Tanzir, and Dr. Visser. Next the rest of the exploration-and-survey group — Pierre le Grise, Mr. Zarbeliev, and Miss Dzozkic. Last were the rest of the soldiers, including Sergeant Amy, and the support staff, which was Dr. Faber (the medical doctor), Mrs. Wilson (the cook), and Miss Hoel.
It made quite a long column, and I was glad Sergeant Amy and Mr. Corvales had arranged to pick up the wagons and the mammoth outside of town. I saw Papa standing in the crowd along the boardwalk, and I waved for as long as I could see him.
An hour later, we passed through the outer edge of West Landing’s protection spells and out into open countryside. The Joint Cathayan-Columbian Discovery and Mapping Expedition was on its way.
Once we met up with the wagons and the mammoth, the riding pattern shifted around some. Roger and Professor Torgeson and I rode near the mammoth; the rest of the scientists and most of the exploration-and-survey team bunched up around the supply wagons. Captain Velasquez rode in front, and the soldiers fanned out in a loose protective circle. Wash and Mr. Zarbeliev and Greasy Pierre rode even farther out, switching places periodically and scanning for trouble as only experienced circuit magicians and trappers could.
It wasn’t much like my last three trips out West, but I didn’t care. The trees hadn’t leafed out yet, and there were only the barest hints of new green under last year’s dead grass, but it still smelled more like plants and less like smoke and axle grease and people. Even with all the wagons and the horses kicking up dust, the air smelled different from the air in Mill City or West Landing.
We reached the first wagonrest around mid-afternoon. The expedition leaders had agreed to keep the first day’s ride short, to give everyone some extra time to work out how best to set up camp. They’d also planned things out with the Settlement Office so that the expedition could head almost straight west, but still take advantage of the wagonrests that the Settlement Office had set up to protect settlers on their way out to allotments at the edge of settlement territory. The expedition was a little bigger than most settlement groups, but not too much, so there should have been enough room.
The big problem with that was the mammoth. The protection spells on the settlements and wagonrests made it irritable, and nobody west of the river wanted it anywhere near their towns or crops. That first night, Adept Alikaket tried to bring it into the wagonrest, and it started stamping and trumpeting and nearly broke free before he finally gave up. Then he suggested taking down the protection spells on the wagonrest so that we could bring the mammoth inside along with everyone else, but after the show the creature had already put on, nobody else thought that was a good idea.
While the adept and Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez were all arguing, I went over to the mammoth. It was still nervous and unhappy. Professor Jeffries and Adept Alikaket had rigged up another harness for it, one that you could hang bags and baskets on, and it was still fully loaded because nobody had dared try to get near it while it was so jumpy.
Three of the army men were holding the restraining ropes, and none of them looked any happier than the mammoth felt. One of them saw me and touched his cap. “You’d best get back, miss,” he said. “He’s mean.”
“Eff Rothmer,” I said. “It’s all right. He knows me. I helped move him to the menagerie last summer.”
“And she’s worked with him for a good five years,” a familiar voice said behind me.
“William!” I turned, smiling. “Did they send you over?”
William shook his head. “They’re still arguing, and it’s spreading. Your professor has opinions.”
I rolled my eyes,
because it was William. “She’s from Vinland. As far as she’s concerned, wildlife is something you shoot first and study later. She’s been complaining about the menagerie animals since the day she got to Mill City, especially this one.”
“What were you planning on doing with him?” William asked, nodding at the mammoth.
“Calming him down, for a start,” I said.
“It’s been a while, but if you’d like some help …”
I nodded before he finished speaking. William had started learning Aphrikan magic along with me, back in day school, and toward the end, before he went off East to boarding school, we’d practiced on the mammoth together.
“He’s a lot bigger now,” William commented as he stepped forward to study the beast.
“Big and mean,” one of the soldiers muttered.
“He’s not mean,” I said firmly. “He’s half wild. There’s a difference.”
“Less talk, more magic,” William said.
I grinned and let my world-sensing flow outward. I felt the warm, sleepy magic in the ground, dusted with a spring urgency where sap was moving in the roots of the grasses and in the seeds that were just sprouting. There were a few short, bright prickles like a scattering of sparks from a fire, and I knew that if I bent to look for them I would find the tiny, pointed shoots of yarrow or pasqueflower just breaking through the earth under the dry, flattened remains of last year’s grass. The air sparkled with our travel protection spells; the log wall around the wagonrest was a low, steady buzz.
I could tell where most of the expedition members were, even though none of them were actually casting spells at the moment. People’s magic is much tidier and more organized than natural magic, so it’s easy to pick out even when the person doesn’t have a lot of magic to look at. Lan was the easiest to spot; he felt like a blacksmith’s forge, with a core of white-hot metal surrounded by an intense fire, all collected behind thick, fireproof walls so that it couldn’t escape or hurt anyone.
Most of the others felt like cookstoves or fireplaces, but there were three obvious exceptions. Professor Ochiba and Wash felt like strong campfires, open and uncontained, but still controlled. Adept Alikaket felt at first as if he had almost no magic at all, like a cold hearth. When I looked closer, I realized that his magic didn’t feel like a cold hearth so much as like one with a fire that had been banked for the night. The adept’s magic was quiet and shielded, like embers waiting for fuel.
I frowned and tucked that thought away for later. Right now, I had to deal with the mammoth. I stretched my world sense toward it and frowned some more. Lan hadn’t helped with the spells on the harness this time, I could tell. They weren’t as strong, and they felt rough and prickly. I reached past them and nudged the mammoth’s magic, soothing him a little, but the harness spells rubbed at him and stirred it all up again.
Beside me, William shifted. “We have to get that harness off him,” he said, and I knew he’d been doing world-sensing the same as I had.
“The harness is all that’s keeping this thing under control!” one of the soldiers objected.
“It’s making him cranky,” I told him firmly. William nodded, and I felt a trickle of warmth as his magic reached out to soothe the creature. I looked over, impressed. He’d gotten a lot better at Aphrikan magic since I’d last seen him, and he hadn’t exactly been bad then.
The three soldiers exchanged looks, and one of them shrugged. “We’re just here to keep him from getting loose and trampling something.”
“Let’s start by getting him away from the wagonrest,” William suggested. “The protection spells are making everything worse.”
“We can’t take him outside the perimeter,” the first soldier said, frowning.
“Not outside,” William said. “Just away from the center. It’s … it’s like he’s too close to a fire; if we move him back, he’ll be more comfortable and easier to settle down.”
I looked around. The settlers had cut back most of the trees and bushes outside the walls of the wagonrest, so as not to leave any place for wildlife to hide, but they’d left one big flag tree off to one side. I pointed. “Over there.”
The soldiers looked at each other doubtfully, but the tree was still well within the area protected by the wagonrest spells, so they urged the mammoth over. I reached out again, pulling at the natural magic in the tree. There wasn’t much of it, this early in the spring, but there was enough to spread into a thin layer between the mammoth and the harness spells. It wouldn’t last long, but for the time being, it calmed the creature right down.
“Go get Lan,” I told William. “I’ll get started unloading.”
William gave the mammoth a doubtful look, but he nodded and walked back toward the wagonrest. I moved forward and started unhooking the bags and baskets, and after a minute one of the soldiers started helping. The other two looked uncertain, so I told them to stay and hang on to their ropes. “He’s calm now,” I said, nodding at the mammoth, “but even calm, he can be a nuisance.”
The mammoth proved my point right then by snaking his trunk over to one of the baskets and knocking the lid off. I pulled the basket out of his reach and checked inside to make sure the contents hadn’t been disarranged. The mammoth made a whuffling noise at me and started pulling at the dead grass around his feet, looking for new growth.
By the time we got all the bags and baskets unhooked and stacked alongside the mammoth, William was back with Lan … and half the scientists and a few more besides. I wasn’t surprised to see Professor Torgeson or Professor Ochiba, but I was a bit taken aback to see Adept Alikaket, Captain Velasquez, and Mr. Corvales, and I wasn’t expecting Wash or Roger or Greasy Pierre at all.
“What are you doing?” Adept Alikaket demanded, frowning. “Ah, I recall you. You were at the center when the circle went to remark it. You know this beast.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m trying to get it calmed down.”
“For which you need your brother?” Professor Torgeson said, lifting her eyebrows.
“He did the harness spells when we moved the mammoth from Mill City to the study center,” I pointed out. I turned to Lan. “Would you take a look at them, please? There’s something off — the spells are trying to gentle him down, but they’re chafing him at the same time. We didn’t have that trouble when we moved him to the study center.”
“Are you certain it’s the harness, Miss Rothmer?” Captain Velasquez asked. “The beast has been wearing it all day, but it didn’t start acting up until we reached camp.”
“It’s the harness, right enough,” Wash’s drawl broke in. “Well done, Miss Eff.”
“The adept himself cast those spells!” Mr. Corvales objected.
“It is no matter,” Adept Alikaket said with dignity. “The spells I used are from Bharat. The elephant and the mammoth are not wholly the same. A small difference can make much trouble.”
Wash nodded. “It’s no particular fault in the spell casting, any more than there’s a flaw in a new pair of shoes that blister your feet when you wear them all day.”
“Just so.” Professor Ochiba had been studying the mammoth while the rest talked. “And there’s no need to wear blisters on top of blisters when the spells can be recast. Mr. Rothmer, Miss Rothmer, could you use some assistance?”
In the end, nearly everyone stayed to help out or watch. William and Roger helped me get the harness off the mammoth, while Wash kept it calm and the soldiers retied their ropes. Then Lan and Professor Ochiba and Professor Torgeson spread the harness out on the ground and stripped all the old spells off. Professor Ochiba checked to make sure they were completely gone, and then the three of them went over the harness a section at a time, recasting the spells to strengthen the pieces of the harness and keep the mammoth calm and controlled.
Adept Alikaket watched closely, commenting occasionally. Once he made them pause while he and the two professors had a long discussion about a particular calming spell and the ways it was like and unlike the on
e he’d used on the first go-round. At one point, I thought they were going to get into an argument about comparing Hijero-Cathayan magic to Avrupan magic that would last all night, but Professor Ochiba pointed out that they had a job to finish and they’d have time to talk later.
Once they were finished, we put the harness back on the mammoth, and Wash and Professor Ochiba and William and I checked to make sure it wasn’t still causing problems. Roger slipped away before we finished without saying anything to me. I was relieved and worried at the same time. I didn’t think we could avoid each other for the whole two years of the expedition, but I wasn’t real eager to get started dealing with him right away, either.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to William that night about anything besides the mammoth and the harness spells. It was a bit frustrating, because the list of things I wanted to talk to him about was getting longer by the minute. I hadn’t had a chance to tell him what his father had said at the good-bye dinner, and I was pretty sure he’d want to know as soon as possible. I wanted to ask him about the Aphrikan magic he’d obviously learned, and I wanted to talk to him about my dreams and the pendant Wash had given me.
As I lay down to sleep, it occurred to me that I hadn’t had one of those dreams in a long time, not since — I thought back. Not since late summer, out at the study center. I fingered the pendant through my nightdress, thinking hard. I’d been using my world-sensing regularly, and I’d practiced up doing my Avrupan spells properly. I’d meant to look more closely at the spells around the pendant, but except for that one time, right after I talked to Wash, I hadn’t done so. And it wasn’t the first time I’d forgotten, either.
I thought about that for a minute, and I thought about all the don’t-notice-it spells in the last couple of layers around the pendant. Then I reached up and pulled the leather cord that held the pendant up and off my head.
The Far West (Frontier Magic #3) Page 16