The Far West (Frontier Magic #3)

by Patricia C. Wrede

  “You’re in my light,” Roger said absently to Lan. He turned slightly.

  I saw Lan glance at the page as he started to step back out of the way. He froze and his eyes went wide. “Miss Dzozkic, what’s this column for?” he asked, pointing.

  “Nothing important,” Elizabet replied. “It’s just the difference between the normal sequence up this river and the readings we’ve been getting on the Grand Bow. I thought the intervals might tell us something useful, but they aren’t consistent.”

  “No,” Lan said in a tight voice. “They’re the base numerancy sequence for the Great Barrier Spell.”

  There was an excited murmur from the scientists and magicians. Roger studied the page and his eyes slowly went as wide as Lan’s had. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. “Why didn’t I see this before?”

  Elizabet leaned past his shoulder and shook her head. “It wasn’t just you. None of us saw it. I even did the calculations, and I didn’t see it.”

  “And what does this mean, Mr. Boden?” Mr. Corvales asked.

  “We can’t be sure just yet,” Roger said absently. “I’m going to have to run some tests. But I think I may finally have an idea why the magic along the Grand Bow has been getting so … intense.”

  “An idea?” Elizabet looked pointedly from her notebook to Roger.

  Roger didn’t seem to notice. “It’s a branch of resonance theory that I studied at St. Edmund’s. It’s pretty new, but it’s held up under laboratory conditions, and I think it would explain our observations.”

  “How long will your tests take?” Mr. Corvales put in.

  “Couple of hours, if I start now.” Roger didn’t raise his eyes from the page. “Elizabet —”

  “Yes, you may hang on to my notes that long, provided you let me help,” Elizabet said.

  “Miss Dzozkic —”

  “Good — it’ll go faster with two of us.” Roger’s answer drowned out the beginning of whatever disapproving thing Mr. Corvales had been about to say. “Or three, if you’ll get in on it, Lan?”

  Lan’s eyes lit up, and he nodded. Mr. Corvales relaxed. Roger nodded sharply and closed the notebook with a snap. “Let’s get going, then.”

  In the end, about six people followed Roger off to unpack his geomancy supplies, including Lan and Adept Alikaket and Sergeant Amy. Mr. Corvales shook his head slightly and went over to Wash, and everyone else went back to their normal duties.

  Roger’s tests took a bit longer than he’d expected, because it turned out that the protection spells interfered with them, especially the don’t-notice-it spell. Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez were in complete agreement about not taking the spells down, so Roger, Lan, and Elizabet had to go a ways past the edges of the spells on the camp, and cast inside a ring of nervous guards. They came back even more excited than Elizabet had been when she rode into camp, and that night they explained it to all of us.

  “It’s a side effect of the Great Barrier Spell,” Elizabet said.

  “I think they did it on purpose,” Lan put in.

  “I don’t see how they could have,” Roger objected. “Nobody is really sure how to create a sustained effect like this, even on a small scale.”

  “Nobody is really sure how they created the Great Barrier Spell, either,” Lan retorted.

  Adept Alikaket cleared his throat pointedly. Lan and Roger settled back, looking slightly sheepish, and Captain Velasquez raised a hand to hide a smile.

  Elizabet waited another few seconds, then went on. “We don’t know nearly as much about the Great Barrier Spell as we’d like, but we know that it’s sustained along the north side by the magic of the Great Lakes and the flow of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and along its west side by the magic that the Mammoth River generates.”

  Everyone nodded, some of them with impatient expressions. “There aren’t very many sustained spells of this nature,” Elizabet continued, “but they’ve all been cast using the flow of the rivers that they follow. That’s how the spell is tied to the river in the first place.

  “The Great Barrier Spell had to go up the Mammoth, across the lakes, and down the St. Lawrence as it was cast. The trouble is that the Grand Bow River is longer than the upper Mammoth, and drains a lot more territory. That makes it the true main channel of the river. The upper Mammoth River, from the confluence north, is really a tributary.”

  “And that means that when President Jefferson and Mr. Franklin cast the Great Barrier Spell, the spell would have naturally wanted to head up the Grand Bow,” Lan said, taking over smoothly from Elizabet. “So they had to have done something to force the spell to head north up the Mammoth, instead of west along the Grand Bow.

  “Whatever they did, it obviously worked, and once the whole spell was in place, it was anchored in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Amerigo, and it couldn’t be pulled up the Grand Bow anymore.” Lan looked at Roger.

  “But the pull is still there,” Roger said. “And in addition, the Grand Bow itself generates magic, which ought to flow into the Mammoth where the two rivers come together. Some of it does, enough that when we take readings, it looks like the Grand Bow is an ordinary tributary river like all the others that flow into the Mammoth.”

  “But it isn’t,” Elizabet reminded us. “It’s the main channel. So instead of pulling the Great Barrier Spell off to the west and up the Grand Bow —”

  “Which can’t happen because the barrier is anchored,” Lan put in.

  “— the river has been sucking most of its own magic all the way back up to its source. And it’s been doing it ever since the Great Barrier Spell was established,” Elizabet finished. “That’s why the magic levels have been rising. That’s what we’ve been feeling.”

  There was silence as everyone absorbed what they had said and did mental calculations. “So there’s eighty-three years’ worth of the Grand Bow’s magic piled up at the source of this river?” Captain Velasquez said. “We must be getting close to it, then.”

  Elizabet and Roger both shook their heads. “Based on our calculations, we still have two hundred miles before we reach the headwaters,” Roger said. “Possibly more.”

  “You mean this prickling is going to get even worse?” someone said on the other side of the group.

  “Maybe, but we don’t think so,” Lan said. “There’s a balance between the pull that tugs the magic upstream and the natural tendency for the magic to follow the flow of the river downstream. We think that’s why it’s so strong this far from the source of the river.”

  Mr. Corvales was looking at the three of them with narrowed eyes. “And what is the problem you haven’t mentioned yet?” he said.

  Lan, Elizabet, and Roger exchanged looks. Then Roger said, “There are several problems, sir. The first is that the longer this situation lasts, the farther down the Grand Bow the high magic levels reach. We have a few years before it gets to current settlement territory, but once the Frontier Management Department starts sending people West again, I’m not sure how long it’ll actually be.”

  “And we already know that the high magic levels along the river attract the most dangerous of the magical wildlife,” Lan said. “Which means —”

  “The river will act like a road bringing them east to the settlements,” Dr. Lefevre said.

  Lan nodded. “The second problem is that we aren’t sure that the situation is stable.”

  “Not stable?” Mr. Corvales said sharply.

  This time, Roger nodded. “When I was in Albion, some of us did laboratory tests of this effect. All of them collapsed after a short time, letting the reservoir of magic that had been built up flow back along the generating conduit all at once. The surge always overloaded the desired spell, causing it to collapse — sometimes with unpredictable side effects. My lab partner’s test cut a pattern of three-inch holes in every piece of furniture in the building; Dr. Wencell’s collapsed a large section of floor. We have no idea if that pattern will hold under field conditions, of course, but —”
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  Mr. Corvales paled. “But if it does, over eighty years’ worth of magic is going to slam into the Great Barrier Spell just north of St. Louis.”

  Roger nodded again. “The barrier might not collapse. We don’t know much about it, and we do know that it’s completely different from any of the spells we tested at St. Edmund’s. But —”

  “But if it does collapse, there’ll be panic,” Captain Velasquez finished. “And that’s even if there aren’t any strange side effects.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Any idea how much time before all this happens?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Roger said. “We aren’t even positive how far it is to the headwaters, and a lot of the other calculations depend on that.”

  “We have to get word of this back,” Mr. Corvales said. Captain Velasquez nodded in agreement, but several of the scientists frowned.

  “Weren’t you listening?” Dr. Lefevre said. “We have to go on, at least far enough to determine whether this … condition is indeed unstable, and if so, how urgent it is to prepare for the worst.”

  That started an argument that lasted until long past full dark. Captain Velasquez and almost all his army people wanted to head home right away with the news. The exploration-and-survey group was split unevenly; everybody agreed that getting word back was important, but Lan and Roger and Wash favored going on, while Mr. Corvales and Elizabet and Mr. Zarbeliev thought going back was better, and Mr. MacPhee kind of waffled in the middle. Most of the scientists favored going on, though Adept Alikaket didn’t venture an opinion. He just watched everyone intently, his face expressionless.

  Nothing got settled that night, but next morning the three expedition leaders holed up in a tent for a couple of hours and came out with a compromise. We’d split the expedition, sending a small group home with the news and as much other data and information as we could pull together fast, and the rest of us would go on toward the headwaters to see what else we could learn.

  That set all the scientists (and everyone else we could spare) to work copying notes and diagrams. The most important ones, of course, were the series of readings Roger and Elizabet had been taking, so those got first crack at our dwindling supply of paper, but everyone else had things they wanted to let people know about, too. I ended up copying out Professor Torgeson’s notes on the rocket trees and blinkflowers and other new plants we’d found, as well as most of Dr. Lefevre’s descriptions of the giant invisible foxes and other magical wildlife, because I could write smaller than Dr. Lefevre’s assistant.

  The next question was who to send back to Mill City, and that caused a whole new argument.

  “A single man can ride farther and move faster than a group, even a small group,” Captain Velasquez said.

  “And if a medusa lizard gets that man, no one will ever know,” Mr. Corvales retorted. “A small group may move slower, but it has a better chance of getting back.”

  “We’ve already reduced our numbers once,” the captain objected. “We can’t afford to send a large enough group to be sure they’d get back, not without seriously reducing the chances of everyone who goes on.” Captain Velasquez sounded like he was going to start yelling in another minute; I hadn’t seen him so worked up before.

  “Who would we send?” Adept Alikaket put in. “We have not many choices.”

  “If you’re sending one man alone, it should be one of the circuit riders,” Sergeant Amy said into the silence that followed. “They have experience getting through the wildlands alone. Next best would be Private McCormick, though he’s used to working with a group.”

  “I’d be willing to try, ma’am,” Private McCormick said.

  Captain Velasquez ran a hand over his beard. “Good man. All your experience is on the Southern Plains, isn’t it?”

  “And on this expedition, yes, sir.”

  “Well, it’s an option.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Mr. Corvales said. “It’s too likely that one man will be lost.”

  “If I recall correctly —” Captain Velasquez broke off and looked across at Wash. “Mr. Morris, I believe you did some solo exploration before you became a circuit magician. What’s your opinion?”

  “When it comes to this sort of decision, I’m a belt-and-suspenders man,” Wash said. “One man alone is one sort of risky; a small group is a different sort. Send both, and I think the word is a lot more likely to get back, one way or the other. Choose the right folks to send, and I doubt it’ll change the odds for the rest of us appreciably.”

  Captain Velasquez looked unhappy, like he’d expected Wash to say something different, but Mr. Corvales smiled. The argument went on a while longer, but in the end, Mr. Corvales and Adept Alikaket overruled Captain Velasquez and decided to follow Wash’s advice. We’d send one rider on the strongest horse we had, to move as fast as he could, and a small group to follow him.

  Then they had to decide who to send.

  Everyone could see that Sergeant Amy was right; the best choice for the lone rider would be one of our circuit magicians, and it’d be good to have one leading the small group, as well. Unfortunately, we also needed one with the expedition that was going on, and we only had two: Wash and Mr. Zarbeliev. Mr. Zarbeliev was still limping from the steam dragon’s burn, so Wash seemed like the logical choice to head back alone … except that Wash had the most experience with the Far West, so he was also the best choice to stay with the main expedition.

  Another problem was who’d go in the small group. Mr. Corvales didn’t want to just send the data; he wanted to send someone who could explain the problem with the magic levels firsthand and answer questions. That meant sending Roger or Elizabet or maybe Bronwyn, but when Mr. Corvales suggested sending Elizabet and Bronwyn back, both of them and Roger insisted that they all needed to go on and continue making readings. And both the group that was heading back and the group that was going on wanted Lan, because the sheer strength of his magic could make the difference if either group ran into serious problems with the wildlife.

  Finally, Mr. Zarbeliev pointed out that his having a bit of a limp wouldn’t slow his horse down any, and that he’d made it home in much worse shape before, even if it wasn’t over quite such a distance. Wash laughed, and they started swapping stories of being out on their circuits, and in the end Captain Velasquez reluctantly agreed that Mr. Zarbeliev would be the single rider.

  Sergeant Amy issued Mr. Zarbeliev one of the jackets made of medusa lizard skin, and a pair of pants to go with it, and he left next morning. Adept Alikaket and Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez took another day to decide for sure who’d go with the small group. In the end, they sent Mr. MacPhee, the minerals expert, because he was a geologist and could explain what Roger and Elizabet had found, even if he wasn’t the one who’d actually found it; Dr. Visser, the agricultural magician, and Dr. Lefevre’s assistant, Mr. Melby, because they were both good with the travel and protection spells and because the rest of the expedition could get along all right without them; and Private McCormick and another soldier, to have some people with a bit more experience of wildlife and the Far West (though by then all of us had plenty).

  The small group left the next day, with one of the elephant guns, another one of the medusa-lizard outfits, a copy of Elizabet and Roger’s data, and all the research notes. Mr. Zarbeliev had only taken the data on magic levels, because that was the most important, and anyway, we didn’t have time or paper to make a third copy of everything else for him.

  The rest of us cached the last wagon so as to travel faster and started upriver again in a sober frame of mind. We were down to nineteen people: the three expedition leaders, five magicians, four exploration-and-survey people, five soldiers, Bronwyn, and Mrs. Wilson.

  Over the next week, the river got shallower and rockier. We stuck close to the bank, so that Bronwyn and Elizabet and Roger could take readings every time we stopped, but we didn’t have as much trouble with the wildlife as we’d expected. Nobody thought anything of it for the first few days, but on t
he fourth day, we passed a big bison herd, five elk, two small families of silverhooves, and a pack of prairie wolves, all heading east at a steady pace. I saw Wash talking to Mr. Corvales after the fourth batch of animals went by, and as soon as they finished, we were asked to double-check the protection spells and make them even stronger if we could. From then on, we rode closer together than usual, so that the magicians didn’t have to cover quite so much space with the spells. Captain Velasquez doubled the guard shifts, and nobody even complained.

  The lack of complaining wasn’t just on account of people being nervous. It was excitement, too, because on the fifth morning, we rode to the top of a rise and caught our first sight of the mountains we’d spent so long heading for.

  We heard wolves howling off to the south that night — proper howls, not the yippy noise that the prairie wolves make. The howls got more distant, then faded away, as if the wolf pack was moving away from us the same way the herds had been. I don’t think anyone slept well, even after the howling stopped.

  Around mid-morning of the sixth day, we reached a tumble of boulders along the riverbank. Most were just big enough to be a nuisance, but some ranged from sitting-on size to bigger than me and my horse put together. One had a tall, skinny pine tree growing out of a crack in the top. A stand of pines grew a ways back from the water, but the ground around the boulders had only some stunted blinkflowers and a bit of windthistle.

  As soon as he saw the boulders, Wash raised his hand to bring us to a halt. We stopped about thirty feet shy of the rocks, crowding our horses together so we could hear what he had to say.

  Wash was frowning, a wary, puzzled frown the like of which I’d never seen on his face before. “Miss Maryann,” he said to Professor Ochiba, “would you do me the favor of making a careful examination of that batch of rocks up ahead?”

  Mr. Corvales’s eyebrows drew together, but Professor Ochiba just looked at Wash, then closed her eyes. I felt something brush past me and through the protection spells I was helping to hold. Professor Ochiba’s expression didn’t exactly change, but it hardened up. After a moment, she opened her eyes. “That’s —” She shook her head.