Or maybe witches would find it too intense, and the magic difficult to harness, this close to a grid point. For me, this magic didn’t come with a specific taste or color. Just a freshness that made the natural hues of the vegetation surrounding us seem brighter and more intense.
We crossed out of the pine trees and onto a paved path that was too narrow to be an actual road.
“We haven’t seen any animals,” I murmured. “I can’t even hear any nearby.”
Kandy turned back to flash me a grin. The green of her shapeshifter magic rolled over her eyes. “They’re near. Just not stupid enough to move when greater predators tread the earth.”
We rounded a slight curve in the path, and I could see the top of the red-and-white horizontally striped lighthouse through the trees.
Then a golf cart tried to run us over.
Literally.
It zoomed up behind us and cut around as I was gazing up at the lighthouse. The cart actually brushed my skirt as it passed by.
“Hey,” Kandy snarled as she stepped off the path.
“Sorry,” a young woman cried as the cart sped away. “It’s our honeymoon!”
“That’s no excuse!” Kandy yelled after the speeding, swerving cart.
“The cart explains the narrow roads, though,” I said.
“Honeymoon,” Warner mused behind me. “The first month of marriage is the sweetest.”
“Yeah?” Kandy asked. “Because of all the mead?” The green-haired werewolf chortled at whatever joke she thought she’d made. Though Warner snorted like he found her amusing, so maybe I was missing something.
“Do Adepts still practice the marriage ritual, then?” he asked me as he stepped up to my left, perfectly matching my stride.
“Yep,” I replied.
“And your parents? The warrior and the witch? They are married? In my … understanding, it is unusual for a guardian to marry.”
He stumbled over the word understanding. I was fairly certain he was going to say ‘time,’ but then didn’t. I felt bad for him. Just for a second. Then I shook it off, reminding myself he was just doing his ‘duty.’ No less and no more.
“No,” I said. “They … ah … the circumstances surrounding my birth were unprecedented.”
“I imagine.”
“They only just reconnected. About ten months ago.”
“Do they plan on marrying?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
Warner shrugged as he glanced around at the tiny village that had practically appeared out of nowhere on either side of the paved path. “It’s good to know the customs of a strange land before walking there.”
Right. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a dragon use the term “walking” when referring to visiting the human world. Haoxin had done so, in fact, speaking from the portal. But Warner seemed to be asking about Adept customs — or, specifically, dragon customs — rather than human. Maybe he was wondering how to ask Haoxin out. Guardian dragons had to date, right? They couldn’t all be nuns and monks. Otherwise, baby dragons like Drake couldn’t go around breaking the necks of baby half-dragons like me.
∞
The single-storey buildings and homes of Hope Town were all painted in bright colors, dominated by seashell pink. Kandy cut up between buildings toward the red-and-white-striped lighthouse that towered easily five storeys higher than any other building in the village. I spotted a few people dressed in bright colors, most of them shopping or hanging around a local coffee hut, but no one gave us a second glance. Kandy had outfitted us perfectly for what was obviously a tourist destination. The sparse population of three hundred — according to Kandy’s brochures — appeared to be a mix of Caucasian and people of African ancestry, but the village didn’t feel desolate. More like everyone was elsewhere — perhaps the cluster of taller buildings on the edge of town that the golf cart was zooming toward. A hotel, maybe.
My stomach grumbled, but I ignored it.
The lighthouse was before us. A pink rope hung across the entrance, which I took to mean it was normally open to the public. Just beyond and down a slight hill, the ocean lapped against a grassy shore. Tiny seaside houses on that shore had boats tied to individual wharves. The low buildings surrounding the lighthouse were painted pink with white-trimmed windows and balconies, which was an odd contrast to the thick red-and-white stripes of the lighthouse tower. We’d left the pine forest behind us. A few palm trees were mixed with the low buildings, but nothing as dense as where we’d come through.
I stopped and stared up at the lighthouse looming before us. Kandy tucked up to the back of my right shoulder, as she always did. Warner stood directly to my left, placed so he occupied too much of my peripheral vision.
“Do you taste that?” I asked. I took another step forward and held out my left arm to block Warner from following. He took my hint.
“Magic?” Kandy asked.
“Sorcerer, I think. Maybe witch.”
Kandy stepped off to the right, her footsteps practically silent as she circled the buildings around the lighthouse. Over the six or so months since Pulou had first tasked us with collecting treasures for him, we’d fallen into a rhythm. Kandy would scout and secure the area while I dealt with the magic — whatever that entailed.
I closed my eyes and focused on the new flavor. It hovered just underneath the natural magic that had been dulling my senses since we’d come through the portal. I brushed my fingers over my invisible jade knife through the fabric of my skirt, and then twined them through the wedding rings of my necklace. I’d been so unfocused — so distracted by wet jeans, hunky, unattainable dragons, and missions far beyond my comfort zone — that I’d been walking all over this new magic without noticing it.
But this was who I was … fundamentally … utterly. There was no use dancing around it. No use trying to be sunshine and light, trying to make up for all the darkness Sienna had left behind in my soul. My deep, deep core. The darkness was there … and it was time to move through it. It was time to embrace the new, to relish the present.
I was a dowser … an alchemist.
I was the warrior’s daughter.
I had a job to do. A job I wanted to do.
“Sorcerer?” Warner prompted from just behind me.
I opened my eyes. The natural colors around me were a blur of green and blue, pink and white. I blinked and the colors settled into trees, lawn, and a dirt path. Kandy was crossing back toward us from around the other side of the lighthouse.
I turned my head toward Warner. He stepped closer. I leaned into him and whispered, “You taste just like black forest cake. I like black forest cake. A lot.”
How was that for embracing the future?
Warner opened his mouth, apparently flustered by my confession.
I grinned, then laughed. A low, husky sound that I hadn’t felt like making in a long time.
“Black forest cake,” Warner said.
“It’s an insanely delicious dessert made with layers of whipped cream, cherries, and chocolate cake.”
“Cake?” Kandy asked as she jogged up to join us. “Who has cake?”
I laughed louder.
Kandy grinned. Then, playing the tourist guide, she swept her arm toward the lighthouse and said, “The Hope Town Lighthouse is one of only three manual lighthouses left in the entire world. It’s operated by a spring mechanism that has to be hand cranked every few hours.”
“Very informative,” I said. Still grinning, I started toward the lighthouse.
Kandy slipped around to stand behind my right shoulder. Warner remained a step behind me.
“I can’t smell any magic around the other side,” Kandy said.
“It’s strong here,” I said, indicating over the pink rope hanging across the open doorway of the lighthouse. “Some kind of sorcery. Like a ward, but not.”
“The lighthouse itself?”
“No. I think that’s real … built by humans
, I mean.”
“It’s a doorway,” Warner said. His tone was even, but I was aware he was repeating himself.
“Okay, sixteenth century,” I said. “You’re going to have to elaborate. I’ve never encountered a so-called ‘doorway’ of magic before.”
“You encounter one every time you walk in or out of the nexus.”
“Nexus?” I asked. “As opposed to a portal?”
“The nexus doesn’t exist in the same pocket of time as this world does,” Warner answered.
“Yeah, it’s a magical construct,” I said, still not completely following him. “That’s why time is weird in the nexus. Like it’s disrupted by the intense magic of the guardians. And the rooms are never in the same place. They can be bigger, or smaller, or missing altogether.”
“I hadn’t noticed that.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a dragon. I’m not.”
“I still don’t get it,” Kandy said.
“The nexus is anchored at a physical location,” Warner said. “A temple in Shanghai.”
“I thought that was just the gateway to the far seer’s territory,” I said.
“It is, and more.” Warner nodded toward the lighthouse entrance. “Something similar is situated before us.”
Kandy looked at me. I glanced around to see that we were still unobserved by the locals, and nodded to the green-haired werewolf. She ducked under the pink rope and crossed into the lighthouse, cutting immediately right to disappear from sight. Though, I could still taste her berry-infused dark-chocolate magic.
“You let the wolf precede you?” Warner asked. Again, his tone was even, but I heard the rebuke nonetheless.
“We all have our talents. Kandy’s is scouting … and, you know, roughing people up. She’s happier doing her thing, and so am I.”
“I’m not questioning you, alchemist,” he said. “I’m simply figuring you out.”
I turned to look at him. The morning sun did wonderful things to his eyes … or maybe it was the T-shirt Kandy had clothed him in. Either way, he was delectable.
“I’m an enigma.”
“I don’t think you are,” Warner said. Then he grinned at me. “I would appreciate if you shared your thoughts about the magic you sense and what its presence means to you.”
“I’ve been trying to perfect a black forest cupcake, but I can’t quite nail it,” I answered.
“I meant the sorcerer magic you’re sensing here.”
Ah, okay. I thought there’d been some flirting going on.
“Though I would be happy to taste any cupcakes you create, alchemist,” he added.
“What the hell is with all the cupcake talk?” Kandy groused as she exited the lighthouse. “I’m starving.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “Warner would like us to share our process with him more.”
“Yeah?” Kandy eyed Warner. “Thinking of sticking around?”
“It’s my sworn duty,” Warner said gruffly.
“That means nothing to us,” Kandy said. “When the world falls on our heads, we make it through. Me, the dowser, and the vampire. You’re just some dragon following us around and acting pissy about it.”
“When the world falls in, I’ll hold it up,” Warner said, quietly and terribly deliberate.
“Don’t tell me,” Kandy said. “Jade is the one it always falls on first.”
Warner looked at me. I caught this gaze and smiled. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll try not to get you killed.”
Warner turned to look thoughtfully up at the lighthouse. “There is little in this world that can wound me, Jade Godfrey, warrior’s daughter.” He looked back at me, or rather at my necklace. “Except perhaps you and your creations.”
Kandy laughed huskily. “He’s no idiot.”
“Nothing inside?” I asked her. I was fairly certain that what I was sensing wasn’t something easily triggered by a tourist, or even a werewolf, wandering through the door of the lighthouse.
“Stairs,” Kandy answered. “I popped the lock on the room at the very top. Nothing. You can walk right through here. There’s a door directly on the other side.”
“And what happens when the alchemist walks through?” Warner asked. I was already ahead of him, though.
I offered my right hand to Kandy and my left to Warner. “Let’s find out.” Then we stepped forward to awkwardly duck under the pink rope and squeeze through the door of the lighthouse.
Nothing happened. The round, white-painted room was empty except for a cloudy window, a set of open steel stairs that wound upward, and a doorway that matched the one we’d just crossed through, straight ahead. But I could feel the magic intensifying before us.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” I said. “Wrong door.” Then I stepped forward to pass through the open door before us, which by all appearances simply led to the front lawn of the pink buildings that surrounded the lighthouse.
I could see a rainbow-colored beach ball abandoned off to one side of the lawn.
I took another step and the colors of the ball flared, intensifying, as did the lawn and the buildings. Then everything blurred before me.
Magic lapped against me. Sorcerer magic, to judge by its earthy base … old, dry, untouched … musty but not unpleasant.
“Ready?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Kandy squeezed my hand. I stepped into the magic, stepped through it as if it was a fine spider web — and for a moment, the world was just a wash of colors … a rainbow of gossamer light.
Warner grunted as if in pain.
I took another step and felt the magic of the web snap around Kandy and me, but not Warner. The ward was trying to deny him entry, even though I was pulling him through.
Warner’s deep chocolate and cherry magic rose beside me. I could actually feel it shifting underneath my hand.
A third step left me standing on a grassy knoll and looking down at an austere temple sitting in the middle of a tropical jungle. The lighthouse, its surrounding pink buildings, and the village of Hope Town were nowhere to be seen. Oddly, the sun was directly overhead now, as if it was midday, not morning.
“Cool,” Kandy said.
Warner grunted and dropped my hand. He brushed his arms and torso, then his legs, as if trying to remove the residual magical web. I felt nothing similar. Just the sorcerer magic of the entrance behind me. Though when I turned to look, all I could see was a slightly warped view of the beach and ocean beyond. No wharves or boats.
“Are you sure you should come with us?” I asked the sentinel. “I know your magic is different. Adaptive. And you told Pulou you’d stay with us, but …”
“I will go as far as I can go by your side,” he answered. “Then I will find another way.”
He didn’t mean it the way he said it. Not romantically at least. But damn if my stomach didn’t flip at the inference.
“It looks more like a temple to me,” I said, hoping to cover my reaction by keeping us on task. “Not a fortress.”
“Yeah,” Kandy said. “Isn’t there supposed to be a moat?”
“That’s castles.”
“Blackwell’s castle doesn’t have a moat.”
“There is no God here.” Warner’s tone was distant and darkly tinged, but not angry.
“Okay, then,” Kandy said. “To the fortress we go?”
“Apparently,” I answered.
The fortress — as Warner preferred to call it — wasn’t terribly ornate, its builders obviously subscribing to the function-over-form method of design. It was built out of gray stone. Its curved roof and gargoyles appeared vaguely Asian influenced. A long sweep of stairs led to wide, blue-painted front doors. Though I couldn’t see particularly well from this distance, I thought the door might be hanging open.
A dirt path led from the hidden entrance we’d just passed through to the wide stone stairs of the fortress. Dozens of two-foot by two-foot stone slabs — their color making th
em appear as though they were carved out of the same granite as the fortress — looked as if they’d been shifted or flipped to one side of the path.
I stepped onto the bare dirt and slowly walked toward the fortress. The flipped stones hummed with sorcerer magic as I passed.
“Don’t touch the slabs,” I said.
“Roger dodger.” Kandy slipped by me to stride ahead.
“Someone lifted these,” I said.
“Yes,” Warner agreed.
“They look heavy … and spelled.”
“Yes,” he agreed a second time. “More sorcerer magic.”
I nodded and looked up at the fortress stairs as we neared. They were also constructed out of stone, but certain slabs appeared to be missing. “The magic in the slabs is in the stairs, too.”
Kandy paused at the base of the fortress to look at the first empty slot. The stone that had previously capped it was flipped onto the neighboring stair. She sniffed the packed dirt that remained. Then she sniffed the air. “Magic all around,” she said.
“The air is still. Almost stuffy,” I said. “The natural magic isn’t as strong here.”
“Like it’s been used up?” Warner asked. “It takes a lot of energy to create a pocket area this large and detailed.”
“You think they stripped the naturally occurring magic to create the pocket and build the fortress?” I asked, attempting to follow his train of thought.
“And its defenses.”
I gestured toward the stones that had been flipped. “Its disabled defenses. But sorcerers can’t tap into and manipulate magic like that. It would have taken a lot of alchemists, wouldn’t it?”
“Or one very powerful one,” Warner answered without taking his eyes off the fortress above us.
Kandy, who was obviously tired of all the yammering about magic, stepped up on the first empty section of stair.
Nothing happened.
She pivoted and hopped to the next empty section, one stair up and to the left. The empty sections zigzagged up to the blue-painted doors of the fortress. Now that we were closer, I could see that they were indeed off their hinges, hanging to one side like they’d been half ripped off.
Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser Series Book 4) Page 15