The Western Plains were a lot more crowded than I’d ever expected. By the time we were three days out of St. Jacques, we were sending curly-horned antelope bounding away from our path nearly every time we topped a rise, and there were so many mammoths and herds of bison and antelope and silverhooves grazing, the whole plain looked like it had freckles.
The mammoths made everyone uneasy. They wandered around in groups of ten or fifteen, which was too many for us to handle if they took a notion to ignore our protection spells and all charge at once. Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez had five men with elephant guns spaced out around the wagons, but nobody was quite sure that even an elephant gun would take down a mammoth in one shot. Also, they took a while to reload. If a whole group of mammoths attacked, they would flatten the wagons for sure.
We met up with our first medusa lizard on the fourth day. One of the soldiers spotted it crouched at the base of a low rise to the south, maybe half a mile away. It looked like an oddly shaped grayish-tan rock poking up out of the new green prairie growth. The soldier had just time to call a warning when the critter started moving toward us.
I’d never seen anything cover ground like that lizard did, not even the saber cats or the antelope. Those of us who’d been riding on the south side of the wagons barely had time to shoulder our rifles before it was in range. I heard one of the elephant guns boom, and a couple of rifles, but they all missed. I waited, tracking the thing as best I could, with my world-sensing stretched as far as I could make it go.
A few yards off, the creature paused. I heard more rifles, and saw the medusa lizard jerk, but I held my fire. I kept my eyes fixed on the knob in the middle of the lizard’s forehead, waiting for it to open. As soon as it did, I fired.
I wasn’t the only one who’d waited; at least half a dozen other rifle shots cracked off right along with mine. The medusa lizard’s head snapped back from the impact, and it fell. I chambered another shot in case it wasn’t quite dead or another one was around.
Distantly, I heard Captain Velasquez shout orders to his men. Two of them dismounted, keeping their guns ready, and approached the lizard from opposite sides. “It’s dead,” one of them called.
Some of the tension went out of the line of men, though everyone kept alert. Sergeant Amy rode up to the captain, and a minute later the captain gave orders to skin the lizard. Everyone was twitchy while we waited, and glad to get moving again.
As soon as we stopped for the day to set up camp, Mr. Corvales ordered extra watches, and Professor Torgeson and Professor Ochiba spent a fair lot of time setting up spells they hoped would detect medusa lizards from a distance. Dr. Lefevre thought that the lizards were daytime critters, and wouldn’t come around at night, but nobody wanted to take a chance, and anyway Professor Torgeson wanted to test the spells.
I helped with the spells as much as I could, which mostly meant running back and forth to fetch candles and herbs and bowls, or to move them a few inches once they’d been set out. As soon as the casting was finished, all of the magicians and half the exploration team started talking about how to improve the spells, especially ways to make them work while we were moving.
That night, I lay awake for nearly an hour before I gave up and crawled out of the tent to sit by the fire. After a little while, I pulled out the wooden pendant. What with all the business of getting out of St. Jacques and into new territory, it had been a couple of days since I’d studied it. I’d tried a couple of different things, and I thought I had a fair notion of the sort of magic that made up each layer. Now I wanted to try working my way down through the layers one at a time.
The first layer, the one that felt like my magic, was more complicated than I’d expected. I couldn’t sort out the Aphrikan spells from the Avrupan ones. Then I realized that most all the time I’d had the pendant, I’d been using both kinds of magic side by side, especially when I tweaked my Avrupan spells with Aphrikan magic to make them work. When I stopped trying to make them be two separate things, studying the magic got a whole lot easier.
Somebody sat down beside me. I pulled myself back from concentrating on the pendant and looked up. “Hello, Wash,” I said, smiling. I hadn’t seen him to talk to since the expedition started. He’d been too busy to spend much time with the magicians during the first part of our trip, because he knew that part of settlement territory so well.
“Evening, Miss Eff,” Wash said. He glanced back at the tent. “Trouble sleeping?”
“Some,” I said. “Mostly I’m just not tired. So I thought I’d work at this a while.”
Wash smiled. “And?”
“It’s a record of spell casting,” I said. “Every bit of magic I’ve done is on there, so I can look and see what worked and what didn’t and why.”
Wash nodded slowly. He looked pleased, but he also looked like he was waiting for more.
“And every bit of magic that anybody else did while they were wearing this is here, too,” I went on. “Not like spells written out in a book. It’s how spells feel when you cast them, and … and the shape of the magic.” I paused. “It works a lot better for Aphrikan magic than for Avrupan spells. For learning them, I mean.”
“It is an Aphrikan study tool,” Wash pointed out.
“Yes, but —” I frowned. “There ought to be a way to keep just a little more of the spell casting, so that when you study on it, you can tell what tools you need for the Avrupan ones. Just knowing that there’s an Avrupan spell that shoos off blackflies doesn’t help much with learning to cast it.”
“Looking for that one in particular, were you?” Wash asked with a grin.
I started to shake my head, then paused. “Not exactly,” I said. “But I was sort of checking to see if there were any spells that’d be of use to the expedition. And I expect that that one will come in real handy in another month or so.”
“Very likely,” Wash said.
“Now that I have some notion what it is, I thought I’d start working my way down, one layer at a time,” I said when it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything more. “Is that all right?”
“It’s one way to tackle it,” Wash said. “There are —”
“— other ways,” I finished with him. “I don’t expect you’d be willing to suggest some?”
“I’ve already done more explaining than is usual,” Wash said, frowning slightly.
“All right,” I said, but I didn’t even try to pretend I wasn’t grumpy about it. “I figured you wouldn’t say, but I had to ask. Couldn’t you at least have warned me about the don’t-notice-it magic, though? It took me years to figure out that that was why I kept forgetting to work at understanding this.”
Wash’s eyes widened. “I do apologize, Miss Eff,” he said after a minute. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you’d have a problem with that, though it surely should have. I take it you’ve found a way around?”
I nodded. “I figured out how to make the don’t-notice-it spells let me in.”
“Just you?” Wash asked sharply.
“Just me.”
“That’s right useful,” Wash said after a thoughtful pause. “Would you mind showing me?”
“I’d be happy to,” I said. “But you’ll have to do the don’t-notice-it spell. I haven’t figured out how to cast that yet, just how to change it after.”
I spent the next hour fiddling with Wash’s don’t-notice-it spell, showing him what I’d done to the ones on the pendant. I found it a lot easier to work on his spells, now that I’d figured out the pendant ones on my own. Finally, Wash sat back and gave me a long, considering look. “That’s well done, Miss Eff,” he said. “I’d purely appreciate it if you wouldn’t pass that trick along, though.”
It sounded more like a command than a request, but I nodded. “Not if you don’t want me to. Is that don’t-notice-it spell a special kind of Aphrikan magic? It doesn’t feel quite like the rest of it.”
Wash hesitated. “It’s not exactly Aphrikan, though it was folks from Aphrika wh
o invented it,” he said finally. “I suppose you’d call it slave magic. Back before the Secession War, plantation owners didn’t take too kindly to their slaves working magic, especially a kind of magic they didn’t know much about. Any magic a slave wanted to learn had to be … quiet. Or cast so that no one would notice.”
“Oh.” That explained a whole lot of things that had puzzled me about the pendant, from the way Avrupan magic suddenly started showing up to why there were don’t-notice-it spells and magic in every layer after. And maybe why I’d had such trouble with the don’t-notice-it spells — I was willing to bet money they’d been designed to work especially well on anyone whose family had originally come from Avrupa, rather than Aphrika. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Eff.” Wash rose and brushed himself off. “I’ll be heading back to catch some sleep now; I’d recommend you do the same. Mr. Corvales is right determined when it comes to getting an early start.”
“I think I’m tired enough to sleep now,” I said. “Good night, Wash.”
He touched his hat brim and vanished into the darkness. I studied the pendant for a few more minutes, then tucked it away and went back to the tent to sleep.
We met up with three more medusa lizards over the next four days, and we lost a horse to one of them, but no people got turned to stone, not even partly. Every day, Dr. Lefevre and Adept Alikaket had some new spells to add to the travel protections, but none of them worked very well. The minute we came in sight, the critters would head straight for us, sometimes from over a mile away. It was a good thing the country was so flat that we could see them coming.
Finally, Mr. Zarbeliev suggested that maybe the medusa lizards were attracted to magic, the same way the mirror bugs had been. That caused quite a ruckus, on account of some folks wanting to go without the travel protection spells and others insisting on keeping them up. While they were all arguing, I pulled Wash aside.
“Do you think that the don’t-notice-it spells would work on medusa lizards?” I asked. “And would it be all right to use them?” I figured that if he didn’t want me telling other folks how to add Avrupans to the don’t-notice-it spells on the pendant, he sure enough wouldn’t want me showing everyone how to work them, especially if it wasn’t going to help. On the other hand, it was pretty clear that we needed to do something different, and if the spells would work….
Wash’s eyes narrowed and he didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he replied, “That’s a good thought, Miss Eff, but let me consider on it some before you go saying anything.”
“I figured you should do the saying anyway,” I said. “I haven’t learned how to cast them yet, and it’d be a mite hard to explain how I know them. And it’s your pendant.”
Wash frowned. “It’s your pendant now, Miss Eff, and has been for quite some time.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, frowning right back at him.
A little while later, I saw Wash talking with Professor Ochiba. It was the first time I’d seen them exchange more than a word or two since the expedition started. I didn’t hear what they said to each other, but the professor started off looking kind of stiff and disapproving and then unstiffened some and looked more interested as they talked.
After dinner that night Professor Ochiba went to talk with Adept Alikaket and Dr. Lefevre. The three of them stayed late by the fire, and the next day, they had another spell to add to the travel protections.
The new spell worked better than anything else we’d tried. The first day it was active, we managed to pass a medusa lizard that for sure was close enough that it would have attacked without it. After we were well and truly past it, I saw Wash catch Professor Ochiba’s eye and tip his hat slightly. The corners of Professor Ochiba’s mouth turned up a hair and she nodded once.
The new don’t-notice-it spell worked on more than medusa lizards, which was a very good thing. It was a lot safer to test how far out it went by sneaking up on antelope and silverhooves that weren’t dangerous and would just run away.
Adept Alikaket and the other magicians kept fiddling with the spell to make it stronger and easier to work. By the end of the next week, the spell kept critters from seeing or hearing us, as well as keeping them from sensing our magic. Mr. Corvales made them teach it to everyone, even though they complained that they weren’t finished improving it yet. After that, it took the hunters a whole lot less time to come back with dinner after we made camp.
Sergeant Amy had gotten skins from all four of the medusa lizards we’d killed, and she had three of the army men hard at work on them every evening. Eventually, we got six lizard-skin suits out of it, to add to the two she’d bought in St. Jacques du Fleuve. She wanted to send out hunting parties to get more, but after we lost the horse to the last lizard, Captain Velasquez said it wasn’t worth the risk, especially with the new don’t-notice-it spell. I think she was the only one in the expedition who was disappointed.
As we worked our way west, we found more and more plants and animals that nobody had ever seen before. All the magicians and half of the survey folks got all excited every time we ran into something new, and Mr. Corvales had to keep reminding them that we’d be coming through the same territory on our way back, and it’d be a lot easier to pick up samples then than to take them now and drag them on an unnecessary round trip to the mountains.
By June first, we were almost to the Grand Bow River. The Grand Bow ran from somewhere way out in the Far West all the way down to St. Louis, where it joined up with the Mammoth River. Lewis and Clark had gone up it in 1804, and sent some of their men back with their maps when they stopped at Wintering Island at the end of that summer, so the first part of the river was pretty well mapped. Unfortunately, nobody knew what they’d found upriver from Wintering Island, because they’d gone on the next spring and never come back. There’s a monument to them in Washington, right next to the one for all the folks who came from Avrupa to all the earliest settlements that failed, and the ones for the Lost Explorers — Jeremy Stokes, who was the first Albionese explorer in the Northeast and who vanished in 1587, and Daniel Boone, who disappeared back before the Great Barrier Spell went up, on his third trip to map the parts of the country that are now the states of Cumberland and Franklin.
We planned to follow the Grand Bow, too, though we had wagons instead of boats. Going up one bank of the river meant we didn’t have to worry so much about wildlife coming up on us from that side, and it also meant we’d always have water for the horses and the mammoth.
The day we reached the river at last, we stopped early to make camp. That night, we had a party, and Captain Velasquez passed out a little tot of rum from the stores to anyone who wanted one. Mr. Zarbeliev brought out his fiddle, and one of the soldiers had an English flute, and we sang until the full moon was sliding down the far side of the black and starry sky.
We’d planned to stay camped there for two days, so that the scientists and survey people could do a more thorough job than usual. I spent the first day with Professor Torgeson and Dr. Visser, examining plants and bugs down along the bank of the river, and making lists and sketches of them.
Dr. Visser was the agricultural expert who’d been added at the last minute, and he was mainly interested in plants that might make new crops. He had a bunch of specialized spells to check whether things were safe to eat or not. They worked fine for finding out whether you could eat something, but they didn’t tell you anything about taste, so every once in a while he’d stop and nibble on something he thought was promising.
When we got back to the camp, Bronwyn and Elizabet were in the middle of a loud discussion with Mr. Corvales. “The readings are too high,” Elizabet was saying in a stubborn tone. She shook a small leather-bound book at Mr. Corvales for emphasis. Her bag of surveying tools sat half open at her feet, and both she and Bronwyn were covered in mud to the knees.
“Miss Dzozkic,” Mr. Corvales replied in a harried tone, “by your own admission, they’re only a point or two
above normal. The natural variation from season to season —”
“I’m not an amateur!” Elizabet snapped. “I took seasonal variation into account.”
“It’s not just at the surface, either,” Bronwyn put in. “I can feel it all the way down to the aquifer. And the flow is all wrong, too. It’s tangled, which you don’t expect around a river.”
The raised voices had attracted a great deal of attention; most of the expedition members who weren’t actually out doing something were sliding closer and closer to the argument.
“It’s still only a few points,” Mr. Corvales said. “And we don’t actually know what normal is, this far west, do we?”
Bronwyn’s lips thinned. Elizabet’s eyes narrowed as she said, “There’s no reason to expect that the coefficient of magic generated by a flowing river would be any different for the Grand Bow River than it is for the Mammoth River.”
“But you don’t know —”
“Excuse me, but we do know, and the coefficient is the same,” Roger’s voice broke in. “Or at least, it was when they measured it at the confluence just above St. Louis ten years ago. And surely one of the reasons we’re out here is to find just this sort of anomaly?”
Mr. Corvales sighed. “Yes, of course. All right, we’ll stay an extra day so Miss Dzozkic can take additional readings, but no more than that! And if you think any of the others can provide a useful perspective, Miss Dzozkic, feel free to draft them.” His eyes cut sideways at Roger.
Bronwyn and Elizabet exchanged glances as Mr. Corvales left and the circle of onlookers began to break up. “Looks as if you’re part of the team, Mr. Boden,” Elizabet said. “At least for now.”
Roger laughed. “I wouldn’t miss this for all the tea in Albion. Would you mind if I looked at the readings?”
Elizabet opened the book she was holding and pointed. Roger leaned forward, his expression one of deep concentration. I hadn’t seen hardly anything of Roger since the expedition started. Even though the three expedition groups tended to clump together when we made camp, we did a fair lot of mingling day to day, so I was pretty sure he’d been avoiding me. I couldn’t honestly blame him, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to keep on that way. I wasn’t about to interrupt him while he was studying Elizabet’s work, though.
The Far West (Frontier Magic #3) Page 19