But Sam was already in the spell, indifferent to the grimy sink and its matching cracked mirror. Peter found his own indignation converting to self-reproach. Who was he to care about such details, when they meant nothing to a being who could walk between worlds and summon all-destroying magic? He kept his peace, and watched the magic do its work.
A scry, Sam had once announced, is just like a magical television. This had failed to arouse the expected reaction from his audience of spirits, who’d wanted to hear that a scry was the greatest magical advancement ever devised, and that its manipulation of images defied understanding.
No, Sam had said flatly. It is, like a TV, a particle accelerator, and the mind is your remote control. We press a certain button to tell the TV what it is we want to see, a signal is sent to the TV, and the TV switches to the correct channel and receives an image. This image is then projected against the screen by hurling particles towards it at a very high speed. So it is with a scry. The only difference is that with a scry the TV takes its power directly from the one who presses the remote control, and if you take your finger off the button the signal will die.
Oh yes. And it may be necessary to hit your TV now and again, to make it work.
Light glowed beneath Sam’s fingers, a misty whiteness that, as in his imaginary TV, filled the surface of the water, from an unseen thought. Sam thought of Andrew, of the picture he’d been given of that freckled smiling youth. He pressed down on the image and made it the focus of his command, telling the scry to find this signal and this one only.
It was slow in coming, but at last it was there. The same freckled face – but the eyes were now tired, heavy from not sleeping. Andrew wore a filthy old coat and his hair was a mess. He hadn’t shaved for days; already a full beard was starting to grow from stubble, though Sam wasn’t sure if this was meant as a disguise. There were lines across his brow and around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there in the picture.
Then, abruptly – as soon as the image was there – it was gone, and what remained was just a pulsing white mistiness beneath Sam’s fingers. He pressed for the image once more, but it was as if a solid wall resisted him. Taking a deep breath, half unaware that he did so, Sam fell to studying this obstacle that so repulsed him.
He was the only Son of Magic and Time. If he couldn’t get past a mere shield…
Yes, he saw its weaknesses – typical flaws in typical spots. The slight failures where spells had been tied, tiny imperfections in its otherwise immaculate casting. This wasn’t the work of a human or even of an ordinary spirit. Truly Andrew’s friend was someone powerful.
Just in time, he decided against tearing it down. The process would have been laborious – one of many hard classroom tasks his mother had used to set, testing his endurance, back before he’d even known the other side of his parentage. And, once it was down, others would find themselves able to scry. That was something to avoid at any cost. If Andrew was going to be found, he had to be the first one there.
He began skirting the surface of the shield, probing for receptor spells, which, like a human body, could read the antigens on the surface of an attacker and detect how best to repulse it. Usually it was something he never did – to be declared to an enemy was to lose your best weapon. But he did it now, relying on Freya’s foresight for the shield to let him in.
And there it was. A receptor spell grafted hastily to the surface of the shield itself, exactly where he would have put it. Judging by the way other powers still clung to it in their various different shades of magic, more than one person had also run into this spell and been classified enemy.
But Sam opened himself wide to the spell and let it roll over him, felt it clawing through the depths of his magic to his deepest soul in search of proof as to who he was and what were his intents. And behind the spell, a conscious mind. Weary, battered by too many attacks – the same mind that had and was sustaining this cursed shield. He opened himself to it fully, whispering through the spell, I am a friend. You know who I am and what 1 want. You know I want to help.
He felt the other consciousness stir. An old, old mind, fatigued from battle, yet radiating such determination, and such pain. Sam found himself wanting to be one with it, to comfort whoever it might be that felt such things. His sudden urge to murmur, like a kindly parent, ‘There, there,’ shocked every part of him that had ever claimed the name of Devil.
A whisper of thought, so relieved that he felt his heart lighten in sympathy.