They were last off, still, a total of fifty-eight minutes behind the leader: not a margin that could be made up by any normal means, not sharing the refueling stops with other competitors. Alma let the Terrier trundle down the runway, weighed down by the full fuel load, hauled it reluctantly into the air and let it climb north for a bit before turning to follow the other competitors. Comanche was just visible in the distance, dark against the hazy sky; the rest were strung out ahead of them, boring on down the panhandle toward the recommended refueling stop at Lake City. As long as nobody else had the same idea they did — but nobody else was that desperate.
She settled onto the compass heading, checking it against the landmarks and the map. She’d worked out the magnetic variation the night before, was sure she could navigate across the Gulf and into sight of Weedon Island, but it was good to confirm that everything was working as she’d expected. There was only the possible head wind to worry about, but she’d taken that into account, too. Her planned heading would bring them in a little north of the island, she could fly down the coast a bit and be sure of her landfall. Though they’d be on the ragged edge of their fuel if she missed it by too much.
She adjusted the fuel mixture, setting it to an economical mix, and tried not to watch the fuel gauge. She’d given herself half an hour to be sure fuel consumption was where she expected, half an hour to be sure this was going to work before she committed them to the open ocean. And she had to be sure. If they tried it and failed, they’d be going down in the Gulf, and no one would know to look for them there.
She put that thought aside, concentrating on maintaining her heading and her speed. Beneath her wing, the land rolled past, deep green giving way to creamy beaches. There was a bit of haze, but not enough to hide the landmarks; a few early thunderheads rose in the distance, but the towers were widely separated, easily avoided. To her right, the Gulf beckoned, clear aqua flecked with foam.
“Time,” Lewis said.
Alma took a deep breath. The fuel was right where she’d known it would be, consumption just where she needed it. The compass was accurate, the weather good. It was their only chance.
“Right,” she said. “We’re going.”
She tipped the Terrier into a wide bank, turning away from the land, pointing her nose toward the open Gulf. She steadied onto their new heading, resisting the urge to open the throttle just a hair. This was the best speed, the safe speed that would get them into Weedon with even a bit of fuel to spare. She had the discipline to maintain it.
She glanced out the side window, seeing the land retreat. The other planes were out of sight, boring on up the panhandle toward Lake City. In just under an hour, they should see Apalachicola off the port wing, the first and last landmark of the trip. And then it was open water all the way across.
Everything was fine. Lewis looked over the instruments one more time, not that Alma wouldn't have said something immediately if something were off. Everything was fine. A few distant thunderheads to the west marred the sky, but they must be fifty miles away or more at the base, far off their course to the southeast. Ahead, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico looked still from this altitude, variations in wave height erased at five thousand feet. Which meant there wasn't much variation, another good thing. Strong storms, strong winds would kick up waves. If these swells weren't running more than three or four feet, then there wasn't anything to trouble the waters.
And yet. Lewis shifted in his seat. Something bothered him. It wasn't anything in the sound of the Terrier's engines. They sang along at their usual pitch. And besides, Alma would notice any variation of handling, Mitch any difference in sound even though he was in the back right now with Jerry and Stasi. No, it wasn't a sound. It just felt like a sound, like something just below hearing. Something off.
Lewis closed his eyes. It was easier to concentrate without distraction. He could feel the plane around him, feel his friends nearby, Alma beside him a bright fire of concentration, focused completely on their course. And still something was wrong. The sigil on the tail glowed in his mind like a lamp, like the lantern at the stern of a sailing ship, pushed here and there by the winds.
"Hey Lewis?"
His eyes popped open.
Alma glanced at him sideways. "Don't go to sleep on me now. If you're that tired, go on back and have Mitch spell you."
"I'm ok," Lewis said. He glanced out the side window. There off the wing was the golden streak of barrier islands off Apalachicola. St. Vincent Island and St. George Island, the last landfall before a hundred and twenty miles of open sea, blue Caribbean almost teal in the morning light. Below the sun caught on the white sails of a ship, a following wind belling out a huge spinnaker, skimming over the sea back toward Port St. Joe and Panama City.
Hang in there, Segura, he thought. Just hang in there and make it count.
Apalachicola had disappeared into the haze astern almost twenty minutes ago when Alma felt the first niggling hint that something wasn’t right. It was hard to tell, but it felt as though the fuel gauge was dropping just a little faster than she had calculated — just a hair under where she’d projected it would be at the end of the first hour. But that could just be the gauge itself, an artifact of the instrument. She’d need to let it ride a little longer before she worried.
Everything else was good. The compass was steady, magnetic deviation exactly as she’d set it, judging by the position of the sun — they could find the Florida coast by the sun any time she needed, just put the sun in her eyes and they’d hit it eventually. If they had the fuel. She looked at the gauge again. Had it dropped? It was hard to tell.
She glanced at Lewis. He was looking out the side window, frowning slightly, and she felt the first touch of fear.
“Lewis?”
He turned back to her, more perplexed than worried, but the knot of fear didn’t diminish.
“Are you all right?”
He hesitated, then shrugged slightly. “Something feels — off. I can’t put my finger on it, though.”
Alma’s eyes went to the fuel gauge again. Nothing had moved, but she couldn’t shake the crawling sense of unease. If Lewis was worried — she’d learned to trust that feeling. She took a breath, resisting the urge to meddle with the settings.
“See if you can pin it down,” she said, and made herself look ahead, toward the horizon and the invisible coast. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him take a deep breath and then another, hunting his center as his eyes closed gently.
Ten minutes, twenty… The fuel gauge was definitely dropping, a full notch below where it should be. She glanced at Lewis again, but his eyes were still closed, and she looked away. Ok, what could up the fuel consumption? She’d worked out the optimum mixture before they left Pensacola, done the numbers so many times she knew she was right on the knife-edge of perfect efficiency. That wasn’t the problem. They were steady at the perfect cruising speed, altitude just right, high enough to ride above the buffeting surface winds…
And that was it, that had to be it. The headwind that she’d been warned about had to be stronger than she’d anticipated, making the Terrier’s engines work harder to cover the same amount of ground. But she’d done the math, worked it all out — the wind had to have increased by more than fifteen knots, and that made no sense at all.
But it had happened. She stared at the horizon, juggling the variables again. She’d cut it close, yes, but there was still a little room. A leaner mixture? No, any leaner and the engines would lose efficiency, they wouldn’t gain anything there. Certainly not less throttle, that would just leave them more vulnerable to the wind. More throttle, to fight it better? Maybe, but that would cost all the fuel reserve. Better to see if they could find better air. If the headwind was stronger at altitude, maybe they could get below it.
She put the Terrier into a shallow dive, watching the numbers tick off on the altimeter. Four thousand fee, thirty-five hundred… She leveled out at three thousand, feeling the first kick of the surf
ace winds, let the Terrier drone on to the east, steady on the heading for Tampa and Weedon Island. Out the window, she could see a boat crossing their course, heading north and west, sails full-bellied with wind. Not a good sign, she thought, but she waited, watching the fuel, until she was sure. The wind was the same or even a little worse, and she pulled the nose up again, rising back toward her planned altitude.
“Al?” Mitch leaned in the cockpit door. Of course he’d felt the unexpected maneuver, and come to see what was up. “Everything all right?”
“Fuel consumption is off,” she said, and heard her voice tight and wrong. “It looks as though we’ve got more of a headwind than we expected.”
She couldn’t turn to look, but she could feel his reaction, the way his whole body stiffened as though he’d been struck. Or maybe that was just her, imagining how he had to feel.
“What’s our margin?” Mitch asked. He paused. “What’s with Lewis?”
“Sorry.” Lewis opened his eyes, shaking himself like a dog emerging from water. “I just — I had a feeling, and I was trying to pin it down.”
“Oh?”
If anything, Mitch sounded more worried at that, and Alma couldn’t really blame him. Lewis’s feelings were rarely a sign of anything good.
“We’ve got some margin,” she said, to Mitch, and looked at Lewis. “Anything?”
“The headwind,” Lewis said, slowly. “It’s not — right? Something’s not right about it? But — that’s pretty big stuff, changing the wind. You can’t do that with, you know, magic. Can you?”
Mitch let out his breath in an explosive sigh. “Goddamn.”
“You can,” Alma said. “If there’s something to start with, and if you know what you’re doing ”
“Jeff was part of the Lodge.” Mitch’s voice was steady, no sign of the pain he must be feeling. “He knows that much.”
“Crap,” Lewis said. “What do we do about it?”
That was the thousand dollar question, Alma thought. And she was Magister, and it all came down to her. She looked at the fuel gauge again, seemingly stuck just under where it should be, and repressed the urge to tap the covering glass.
“How far south have we come?” Mitch asked.
“About sixty miles.”
He knew the map as well as she did. Once they were past Apalachicola, the Florida coast bowed away to the north and east, fifty, seventy miles at the very least just to land, and God knew how far to the nearest airfield. It was about twice that far to Weedon Island, but at least there was a field, and fuel. If they turned inland now, they’d definitely lose the race. If there was an airfield to serve them.
“Lewis,” she said. “Check the almanac. Is there anything at all on the coast west of Gainesville?”
He reached for the little book, paged quickly through it. “That’s all swamp,” he said, after a moment. “I’m not seeing anything.” He turned pages again, shaking his head. “The nearest field along there is Lake City.”
“Well,” Alma said. That made the decision easier. It was just as far to Lake City as it was to Weedon Island, might as well carry on. Except that crashing in a swamp might be marginally preferable to going down in the open ocean… The point was not to crash. “Mitch, talk to Jerry. Lewis, go back and help them. See if there’s anything we can do to counter whatever Lanier’s doing.”
“Right,” Mitch said, and backed away.
Lewis scrambled out of harness and seat, careful even in his haste. He paused just long enough to touch her shoulder, and disappeared.
“Keep me informed,” she called after him, but there was no answer. And that was part of being Magister, she knew. She had her job, and they had theirs, and she would have to trust them. Just as they would have to trust her.
Mitch went back into the Terrier's cabin and took a deep breath. Jerry and Stasi were ignoring each other completely while reading different parts of the same newspaper. "Jerry," Mitch said. "We've got a problem."
Jerry straightened up, a familiar expression of keen intensity on his face. An occult problem obviously. If it had been something mechanical, Mitch would have gotten Alma or Lewis. "What's wrong?"
"Jeff Lanier's called an eldritch wind." There wasn't any good way to put it, no way that wouldn't hurt. Maybe Jeff had tried to kill him in New Orleans and maybe not. That shot could have been meant to warn, way wide of the mark. But this… This wouldn't just kill him, but Jerry and Al and Lewis who Jeff had never even met. If they went down at sea there would be no survivors.
"Ok." Jerry put the paper down as Lewis followed Mitch back into the cabin. "What's it doing?"
"Slowing us down," Mitch said grimly. "It's a headwind. We're still on course, but we're burning fuel a lot faster than Alma figured. At this rate we won't make the coast."
Stasi looked alarmed. "Crashing at sea?"
"Yes," Mitch said shortly. They shouldn't conduct Lodge business in front of her, but given that there wasn't any other room to put her in, short of locking her in the baggage compartment again, it had to be. Besides, she'd proved her worth, and that was good enough for him.
"I don't like crashing at sea," she said.
"Can we skip the hysteria?" Jerry said. "Do you have any idea what protocol Jeff is using?"
"None," Mitch said.
"I don't even know what a protocol is," Lewis said, frowning.
"The method he's using, the symbols," Jerry said. "But if we don't know, we don't. Alma…"
"Is flying the plane," Lewis said. "And she needs to, because she's the one who handles the fuel consumption best. It's up to us."
No, Mitch thought. It's up to me. This isn't Jerry's kind of thing, quick and dirty and literally on the fly, with no proper procedures or equipment.
Jerry put his head to the side, considering. "A simple negation? The negation of air is earth."
"I don't think we can do that in an airplane," Mitch said. "We're depending on the flow of air over the control surfaces. On lift. I don't think we can negate that safely."
"Can we use the tail sigil?" Lewis asked. "That helped before."
"That's to protect the plane," Jerry said. "A headwind doesn't harm the plane or its occupants. The sigil's not going to work counter to something that isn't in itself harmful."
"It will be harmful if we crash," Lewis said.
"Yes, but wind isn't harmful. It's not malevolent." Jerry glanced over at Stasi. "Not like the necklace is. There's nothing innately bad about wind out of the southeast. And the wind isn't trying to harm us. It's just that the results of the wind are dangerous."
"We need to attack him," Mitch said.
Lewis's eyebrows rose.
"Break his concentration, break his hold on the wind," Mitch said. "Hurt him if we can." He looked at Jerry. "Sometimes the way to get a guy to quit is to punch him in the nose." The amount he'd like to do that beggared description. If he could get his hands on him right now…
"I'm not arguing," Jerry said. "If a guy is trying to kill me, I have no compunction about punching him in the nose, physically or otherwise."
Lewis looked troubled. "How do we do that? I have no idea how you would even start doing something like that."
"Not that you're pissed off, darling." Stasi crossed her legs negligently.
Mitch ignored her, answering Lewis instead. "Magic is energy, right? Energy is creating airflow — the wind — just like it does when a prop turns. You can trace the crankshaft that turns the prop back to the engine, right?"
"Well, sure," Lewis said.
"And then you can see what makes the engine work — the internal combustion — provided by the spark plug and the magneto. That's where the energy is coming from. The prop turns, creating airflow, because of the application of energy upstream. So what we can do is trace the energy back from the airflow to the magneto. From the wind to the magician." He couldn’t quite bring himself to say 'to Jeff.' He couldn't believe it, not deep inside, even if it were true. Not that killing the Axeman wouldn't be ju
stice. But there were the others.
Lewis nodded solemnly. "And then?"
"And then you use a counterspark," Jerry said. He leaned forward in his chair. "If I'm following your engine metaphor."
"Like an engine with one spark plug," Mitch said. "There's the possibility of uneven burning if the fuel isn't high enough octane, like if you're burning regular gas instead of aviation fuel. A second spark creates an unsynchronized flame front."
Stasi put down her section of the paper with an incredulous look on her face. "A what?"
"A knock in your engine," Lewis said. "It tears up your engine."
"You are out of your mind with your spark plugs and things! What are you talking about? Magic or mechanics?" Stasi demanded.
"There isn't any difference," Mitch said.
"There certainly is."
"Look, are you going to help or not?" Mitch asked, putting his fists into his pockets. "If not, that's fine. But we need to talk about it."
"Oh, I'll help," Stasi said grimly. "Crashing in the ocean isn't my idea of fun, darling."
"What do we do?" Lewis said.
Mitch looked at Jerry and Jerry gave him a nod. "Your operation."
"Ok. Let's set up a basic circle. Then Jerry will help me establish the connection. I'll trace it back and drop a match in his engine. Lewis and Stasi, you'll lend energy and stabilize the circle."
"With no ground," Jerry said.
"Our ground is flying the plane," Mitch said. He looked at Stasi. "Unless you happen to be a strong earth sign?"
"You must be kidding," she said. "I'm all air and fire, darling."
"That makes me the ground," Jerry said. He shifted in his chair. "Do we have to get on the floor?"
"You stay in the chair," Mitch said. "I'll sit on the floor."
"I'm already on the right side," Jerry said. "Starboard is west, more or less."
Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 63