Rough Magic Read online

  In normal times, Istvan would have activated the ward on his office door for privacy. As it was, the physical barrier of the doors probably couldn’t defeat a werewolf’s hearing. Sorcha wanted information, but she’d keep others from eavesdropping.

  “Thank you. Let Dorotta, Yana and Jarod in when—”

  “I’m here!” Jarod skidded inside Istvan’s office, interrupting the black griffin. “Amy.” He was slighter than Rory, but his wiry arms were still strong. He squished me in a hug. “Don’t go running into danger.”

  The doors thudded shut, closing out Hew’s interested face.

  Istvan clacked his beak. “Actually, I want you to run into danger with her, Jarod.”

  My adopted brother’s arms dropped in shock. “Really?”

  “Activating the orb unlocked Earth’s magic from its unnaturally stable pattern. This rough magic was meant to be controlled. The ancient human mages intended for the orb to be located and activated after a world spindle had been discovered. We must find that spindle. The situation is worsening. Harold is going to declare an extinction level threat and order a three day moratorium on magic use. We have to retrieve the world spindle in that time.”

  “Holy hells.”

  Jarod wasn’t alone in swearing.

  Istvan dipped his head in agreement. “Nora has found us three possible locations. They might be completely wrong, but we will begin with them. Because of time constraints, we will have to risk portaling.”

  I interjected. “Two of the locations are in South America. The third, the most likely in my opinion, is marginally east of the Grand Canyon.”

  “I trust Amy’s instincts on this choice,” Istvan said. “The blood of the ancient human mages runs through her. They had a concept akin to the third eye. Acua, an awareness of Earth’s power. We believe it might approximate to sensing magic. Amy feels the strongest draw in the direction of the Grand Canyon.”

  No one laughed or questioned that our critical mission was to be guided by my hunch.

  “We need humans to accompany us, since the ancient mages would have hidden the world spindle somewhere they believed that their descendants could reach—enabled by technology rather than magic.” Istvan outlined his thinking on the ancients’ requirement that their descendants, mixed with mundanes, be able to kill and defend against the bathumas.

  Emil cleared his throat. “Speaking of bathumas…”

  “We’ll get to current threats and disasters,” Istvan said. “The expedition must be decided. Jarod, you are a fearless climber, are you willing to join us belowground? I may be unable to physically fit where you are required to venture, but Rory and Nils will accompany Amy.”

  As members of the magisterial guard unit, he didn’t ask Rory and Nils. They were his to command, and Rory wouldn’t let me go without him; not on something this dangerous. Jarod and Digger, however, had a choice.

  “I’m going,” Jarod said.

  Digger folded his arms and stared at Istvan.

  “We’re only taking one other human. Digger?”

  “Yes.”

  Jarod winced. “Ooh, Dad won’t like that.”

  “Mike’s at the salvage yard,” Digger said. What he meant was that Mike wasn’t present to protest. Besides which, Digger was fitter. Mike had strength from his blacksmithing, but Digger had greater agility and endurance.

  For Istvan, Digger’s inclusion, and Mike’s exclusion, didn’t require further discussion. “Berre, you and Yana are to outfit our expedition for spelunking and desert travel. Rory, I’ll have Radka and Dorotta brief me on territorial matters. The one preparation no one can undertake for you is sleep. So that’s your priority. Nils, same for you. You should be able to snatch four hours, now. Digger, have someone show you and Jarod to guest rooms. You can doublecheck the kit Yana and Berre supply when you wake. Go.” Having dismissed us, Istvan turned to Emil, who’d wanted to discuss bathumas.

  Emil gestured to Radka. The adorably fussy vampire night clerk preferred to do things in an orderly fashion, and that included having his boss, the chief clerk, speak first.

  Radka had a folder of notes. “We’ve contained a forest overgrowth devourment in…”

  I didn’t need sleep as urgently as Rory did, but I was greedy for all the time with him that I could steal, so I hustled him out.

  Everyone whom Istvan had dismissed followed us.

  Sorcha grabbed Berre as we exited. “Caving. They’ll need harnesses.” Her expertise as a leatherworker would be useful.

  “I’ll speak to Peggy about food.” Wendell vanished in the direction of the kitchen.

  Nils followed him since the guard quarters and his bed were on the other side of the kitchen yard.

  People who’d scattered in the face of Sorcha’s scowl, drew close again. Digger picked one out. “Rafe.”

  The teenage son of the magistrate hall’s stablemaster pushed through the crowd. He wore a bright orange scarf around his neck. He was a centaur and he literally pawed the ground in his eagerness as Digger gave him instructions.

  “Find Mike at the docks. Tell him that Amy and Istvan have returned and that Jarod and I will be leaving with them after Fae King Harold’s broadcast. Ask him to get Stella, Niamh, Craig and himself here in four to five hours from now.”

  The crowd listened as avidly as Rafe before scattering as the centaur kid spun and cantered out.

  “Sabinka’s doing,” Jarod said. Sabinka was Justice’s deputy mayor and a nymph apothecary. “She asked for teenage volunteers to act as messengers and run notes across town. While on duty they wear an orange scarf from Pavel’s clothing store.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, the corners of my mouth twitched. Pavel was a haute couture designer with an excellent opinion of himself, his talents and his business. If he heard Jarod describe his boutique as a clothing store, he’d hit him. Probably with a stick of scented tailor’s chalk.

  “If a warning, or good news, has to go out to everyone, Peggy’s family are building a wooden bell tower. Dad donated the bell. Craig salvaged it from Osceola,” Jarod added, rightly proud of our family’s contribution to Justice’s emergency response system.

  The Faerene Migration had been planned on principles of justice and fairness. To seal the Rift and keep it sealed, they’d knocked humanity back to a Renaissance era level of existence. However, they’d also signed on to live in the same manner, with a few advantages like the slates. The bunkers were where their advanced technologies, scientific research and contact with other Faerene worlds via world-viewers were maintained. The bunkers held everything the Faerene needed for their survival now and into the future.

  Or so they’d believed.

  If the feral magic destroyed the bunkers, what then? How far would Faerene and human societies regress?

  The relevant issue here and now and without borrowing trouble (of which we already had an oversupply) was that Justice had been founded to operate as a Renaissance town. That meant that apart from the slates, which they wouldn’t be able to use for three days, they had no equivalent of a telephone network.

  Messengers wouldn’t be the sole temporary measures currently in place. And when the moratorium was announced, those measures would become more important.

  “Captain Olsen,” Rory called to Justice’s chief of police, who’d just entered the hall. “I don’t have the details, but in his broadcast, Harold will announce a three day moratorium on using magic. Istvan and I will be leaving Justice shortly after that. I am under orders to sleep before then, and I need to.”

  Olsen, a very scary elf, nodded with an even grimmer air of resolution than normal.

  Others, however, greeted the end of Rory’s short statement with a barrage of questions and exclamations. They closed in around us as he tried to lead me to the stairs up to our room and the guest rooms.

  Rory snarled.

  I’d never felt the full, aggressive power of his alpha status before. I found it thrilling, but I was his mate.

&n
bsp; The people around us looked as if they were going to pee themselves.

  “I’ll oversee preparation for the moratorium,” Olsen said into the silence.

  Confused by the odd note in the police chief’s voice, I peeked around Rory.

  Olsen smirked at the mob. He appeared amused and satisfied by the townsfolk’s subdued state. “I’ll work with Radka and Yana.”

  “Dorotta is returning.” Rory kept walking to the stairs.

  Digger shoved Jarod to follow us.

  “We’ll be ready for Harold’s broadcast,” Olsen promised.

  Rory raised a hand in acknowledgement. He moved with his usual casual stride, one that covered ground effortlessly, but the lines around his eyes and mouth were disturbing. The magic sickness would have struck him harder than many because he used magic more than most.

  He was my priority.

  I pointed out guest rooms to Digger and Jarod and excused myself with the promise to talk after we’d all slept. I’d snatched some sleep at the cookhouse, but Rory waited for me and he needed rest.

  We closed the double doors to our room and I slid across the bar that bolted it. When Istvan had originally assigned me the room, the Faerene staff had regarded my request for a physical means of securing it as odd. They utilized wards. The bar wasn’t so odd, now. Hearing it thud into place had a weight of stress sliding off me, and off Rory.

  He set the alarm clock before reaching for me.

  Clothes came off in between kisses. His body was a familiar wonder. Some of the scars he wore he’d given brief explanations for. Others were anonymous badges of pain and survival. I touched the mark of claws over the left side of his ribs.

  He gave a low, rumbly growl, and then, we were making love, foreplay foreshortened by the desperate desire to be together and for the release of orgasm.

  As much as I’d worried for him, he’d worried for me, and in a few hours we’d face new dangers. The orb might have described djinn, but encountering one would be totally different to half-understood, theoretical knowledge.

  “Here and now. You and me. Forever.” Maybe similar thoughts were circling in Rory’s mind.

  Exhausted, he fell asleep without our usual cuddle.

  I tucked the covers around us and left my hand on his chest, falling asleep to the relaxed sound of his breathing.

  The clerks’ room was off limits to the general public. I sneaked in, or rather, I entered quietly and Dorotta immediately saw me and beckoned me over to where she stood against the back wall. Radka was in the middle of the desks and chaos, surrounded not only by her clerks but by magisterial guards. In Istvan and Rory’s absence, Radka and Dorotta were to take joint command of the magistrate hall and responsibility for the North American Territory. Urwin and Wendell maintained a slate each. Dorotta and I watched the incoming reports and eavesdropped on conversations.

  The magistrate hall staff recorded reports and discussed them with guards, plotting incidents to try and reveal overall patterns. Data came in intermittently from the research bunkers, as well as via individual inhabitants of the territory. Some of the latter protested vociferously on being told that they were on their own. Advice, on occasion, was given as to how to handle a problem, but we were no longer sending out our people.

  “When the moratorium lifts, we’ll be ready to act,” Dorotta said.

  But first everyone had to survive the worsening rough magic. I no longer felt the chaotic streams of magic as I had when the orb unlocked Earth’s magic from its ancient pattern. However, any of the Faerene I looked at showed its effects. The magic sickness struck hardest those who used their magic the most, which defined the key personnel in this room.

  Dorotta’s copper scales had acquired a greenish bronze hue and she’d tucked her wings in tight, clamping them against her body.

  “I’m sorry for Soma’s death. My condolences,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Dorotta had been friends with the blue dragon who’d died in Civitas, but vision of his crash-landing would have traumatized all dragons.

  “He was an honorable dragon. And funny. People often overlooked his sense of humor.”

  They had been friends. I touched her wing gently.

  “We honor those who fly before us by living well.” Dorotta inhaled with a rattle deep in her chest. “Excuse me. I need to smoke.”

  I moved aside so that she could leave to expel her agitated smoke. If magic had been working as it should, she could have stayed and extracted the smoke from the room.

  If magic had been working as it should, Dorotta wouldn’t have been trying to hide her tears.

  Radka looked from Dorotta to me in silent question.

  I gave her an unhappy smile and a nod. Things were as okay as they could be in the circumstances.

  Dragons were among the strongest, as well as indisputably the largest, of the Faerene. A substantial number had joined the Migration: enough to recover from the rough magic even if they lost more people. But what would happen to the smaller groups, people like the amphibious Huh or the Naga? If their populations took a hit, could they survive?

  The bunkers held genetic stock, but the bunkers weren’t safe zones at the moment.

  I shouldn’t have asked, not even in my mind. It was challenging fate.

  Radka beckoned me over. “I’m not showing you this to be cruel, Amy.”

  My chest and gut muscles tensed.

  She asked an elf clerk to maintain a slate for us. While the other slates were positioned for everyone in the room to observe, this one was angled solely for us. “The moratorium gives us a breathing space. It’s desperately needed. Some of the Faerene would have been renouncing magic anyway, and not in the small ways of the dragons and griffins being grounded.”

  Vision appeared on the slate.

  I recognized the figures. They were Huh, humanoid frogs about three feet tall.

  “The Huh are reviled on Elysium.” Radka stared at the slate. Her slender fingers gripped the edge of the desk hard. The bark-pattern of her dryad skin was more noticeable than normal due to exhaustion. “Our largest population on Earth is in the Everglades. Dorotta took them under her wing.”

  The largest of the Huh was tying another Huh’s wrists and ankles to a hammock that was stretched out between two stakes driven into the ground.

  I had no idea what the Huh were doing or why Radka watched. I leaned closer to the slate. “Dorotta introduced me to the Huh when she flew me to Miami. We stopped off along the way. She gave them charcoal. They ate it as a treat.”

  With the current Huh secured in her hammock two feet off the ground, the free Huh moved to another Huh and another hammock and repeated the binding process. As the vision pulled back, I saw three rows of Huh lying in hammocks, some bound and others waiting to be bound.

  “When Sam finishes, he’ll climb into the last hammock, secure himself, and endure till it is safe to be freed. The Huh fear losing their minds over losing their lives.” Radka wiped a tear off her cheek. “We have to steady the magic flows for the Huh to live. Dorotta is one of their two sworn guardians. It’s an important position in their culture, one given to an outsider. The other guardian is an elf who lives on the edge of the Everglades. She’s another botanist, like Nils.”

  “Radka.” My voice emerged huskily from my dry throat. “The Huh are amphibians. They’ve staked themselves out in the open, with no shade.”

  “Their skin will dry, crack and fester.” Professional calm steadied her voice. “At the end of the moratorium Dorotta will risk herself translocating in to free them regardless of whether the magic flows have steadied. Three days is as long as the youngest Huh can survive.”

  “Why?” When I’d met the Huh, I hadn’t particularly liked them. There’d been a childlike naivety to them, a directness and insularity that struck me as rude. They’d shown no sympathy for the suffering of humanity, dismissing the survivors who’d chosen to stay in Miami as crazy people.

  “Maeve, shut down the slate.”

  The elf chan
neling magic gave Radka a grateful looked and sighed, shoulders slumping, as the slate went blank. She staggered away, wiping her hands on her skirt.

  “The Huh’s magic is necromancy,” Radka said. “They raise the dead. If they’re exposed to more magic than their bodies can cope with, they raise the dead without meaning to. On Elysium, they’re reviled. They’ve adopted a weird, crude culture, presenting to outsiders as if they’re intellectually limited. According to Dorotta, it’s a psychological protective mechanism and an act of defiance.”

  Finally, Radka looked away from the blank slate to me. “When the Huh raise the dead, a little bit of their mind is sucked along their magic to guide the corpse, whether the corpse is that of a sentient being or an animal. Raise enough dead and the Huh become the zombies. They fear the death of their minds more than of their bodies. That’s why they suspend themselves in the air to suffer. Being bound clear of water and earth, their two natural elements and the elements in which corpses reside, prevents their magic from acting.”

  She held my wrist. “It’s an awful thing to witness, but if that’s all we can do for them, I believe we owe them our grief. In times of tragedy, distinguishing between desperation and heroism is almost impossible.”

  “If the Huh survive, they’ll do so on their terms.” The Huh’s actions compelled pity, but they also angered me. Maybe I was actually angry at being helpless to save them—except that by finding and activating the world spindle, we hoped we could steady Earth’s magic flows and save all the Faerene.

  Radka was reinforcing emotionally, viscerally, the urgency and stakes of our expedition.

  I found it very easy to direct my anger at her. “Humans made similar terrible choices less than a year ago. Our apocalypse stuck us in situations where there were only bad options. No salvation. We called that the Faerene Apocalypse, but humanity bore it, not you. Now, you are bearing the burden and I sympathize and I will help you, but you don’t get to complain that your suffering is special. Every being on this planet feels pain. Every person matters.”