Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (23 page)

“They’re here. I can feel them,” he answered. “Waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Kandy said. “I thought they wanted the map?”

“Perhaps they just wanted to give us a push,” Warner answered.

I jogged up the nine stairs and stepped in behind the statue, skirting around it to see that it depicted a woman. The detail of the carving was intricate, and in complete contrast with the utilitarian fortress. The woman was wearing a wide skirt, so long that only the tips of her shoes showed at the hem. Her bodice was laced at the back and cut square along her collarbone. Her neck and hands were bare of jewelry, but what appeared to be a circlet rested on her forehead. Her eyes were wide open and staring at her outstretched hand, which hovered a couple of inches away from a rough-hewn wooden box that sat in the very center of the stone altar.

“Hello, Game of Thrones,” I muttered. “Someone wants their costume back.” Then I called out to Kandy and Warner who were still ascending behind me. “It’s weird, isn’t it? That the statue doesn’t match anything else around here? Look at the detail … her hair falling over her shoulder, the way her feet are placed, as if in midstep. Then look at the altar, the dais, and the box. All of which are just basic. Serviceable.”

“Maybe something used to sit there instead of the box?” Kandy offered. “And whoever came before us took it and left the box?”

“What does the magic tell you, alchemist?” Warner asked. “The runes along the edges of the altar are inert, yes?”

A thick layer of dust practically obscured the carved runes Warner was referencing, but I was way more interested in the wooden box. “The box holds … something … but I taste nothing from the statue or the altar.” I skirted the altar until I was standing opposite the statue. From there, I could see her eyes were fixed on the wooden box. “Does she look surprised to you?”

Something was really bugging me, but I just couldn’t figure out what. I looked up to meet Warner’s gaze. He was staring at me — not the statue or the box. Figuring me out, not the puzzle standing right in front of him. I could feel myself start to blush — yes, like a silly teenager — just as something occurred to me. My stomach bottomed out at the thought.

“What did you just realize?” Warner asked, his tone low and intimate.

“She’s not … I mean, you’ve been concerned about the fortress being broken into and why you weren’t … woken.”

“She’s not.”

“Not what?” Kandy asked.

“A sentinel,” Warner answered.

I looked back at the statue, my stomach rolling uncomfortably at the idea of Warner ‘sleeping’ encased in stone like this. He had screamed when he appeared in front of Kandy and me in the alley. I’d assumed that the magic of whatever transportation spell had sent him there had just overwhelmed him … but … what if …

I looked back at Warner, who offered me a curl of his lips. Not really a smile, but an attempt at one. Then, failing that, he shook his head emphatically.

“She could be a warden of some other kind,” Kandy said. “You know, like a gargoyle or a nondragon guardian. But neutralized or petrified. Another trap that’s already been triggered?”

This pulled my attention back to the present. I couldn’t figure out Warner’s potentially terrible past right now. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to know the details of what his sentinel duties meant for him when he was ‘sleeping.’

“Not that I can taste,” I answered Kandy.

I reached over to the box and lifted the lid.

Warner hissed harshly, like he was really pissed off all of a sudden. Yeah, I had just touched an unknown magical object without laying down protection spells or anything. I got that reaction a lot, but I wasn’t a protection-spell-laying kind of witch.

Nothing happened.

“Well, that was oddly easy,” I said.

“Oh, fuck,” Kandy snarled. “You had to say that out loud.”

We glanced around the fortress to see what karma was going to rise up to kick our asses.

Nothing happened.

I leaned forward, placing the lid to one side of the altar as I peered inside the eight-by-six-inch wooden box. Three braids of what appeared to be silk thread were coiled inside.
 

“Hmmm,” I muttered. “Usually these sorts of things come with velvet cushions and diamonds. Or at least some kind of precious metal. I wasn’t expecting hair ribbons.”

Warner didn’t step any closer, but Kandy lifted up on her toes to look. “Ribbons?”

I reached out with my dowser senses, trying to get a taste of the alchemist magic that coated the braids. Each tiny rope, or ribbon, or whatever they were, was braided with five individually colored silk threads. At least, I assumed the braids were magical in nature. It might just have been the wooden box I was tasting. “Red, orange, yellow, blue, and violet,” I said to Warner and Kandy, both of who had smartly stayed a step away from the altar.

“Like the key and the doors,” Kandy said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “We’re here to pick up rainbow-colored braids?”

“Almost a rainbow,” Kandy corrected.

I glanced at Warner, who did not look like a happy camper. His teeth were clenched so tightly I could see the strain across his jaw and cheeks. “Is this what we’re here for?” I asked. “Or is it some weird message from whoever got here before us?”

“You can’t feel the magic?” he asked. His voice was strained.

“Not as much as you seem to.”

He met my gaze intently and then nodded his head.

Okay, weird. But whatever. I picked up the lid, intending to replace it before I took the box off the altar.

“Destroy it,” Warner said.

“What?”

“I think you should destroy it.”

“That’s not what we’re here to do,” I said. “Pulou …”

“We tell the treasure keeper we couldn’t find it.”

I stared at Warner. Even Kandy stopped her pacing to look at him. Then she started laughing.

“What about duty?” she asked him. “Loyalty? And how do you know the fucking thing won’t backlash and kill Jade if she tries to do what you ask? For someone who said he’d hold up the world if it came crashing down, you have a pretty loose understanding of the concept of protection … and friendship.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Kandy so quietly angry, so utterly affronted.

I placed the lid back on the box.

Warner shook his head as if clearing it. Then he grimaced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If you could feel it you would understand. It’s like millions of lightning bugs crawling underneath my skin, digging into my brain, heart, and lungs. I’ve never felt the like.”

“I still wouldn’t have asked Jade to do something so stupid. She does stupid things just fine on her own.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“You know what I mean,” the green-haired werewolf continued. “You already take too many risks too easily.”

Warner focused on me. “I apologize, alchemist,” he said, his words carefully deliberate. “I spoke before I thought. I will bring the matter up with the treasure keeper. Perhaps he will feel the same way as I do. It was an instant reaction.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Kandy said. “The statue is starting to creep me out.”

I totally got what Kandy was talking about, as I nodded to acknowledge Warner’s apology. Then I reached to touch the sides of the wooden box with my fingertips. Runes glowed underneath a layer of dust on the altar that I hadn’t paid much attention to when investigating. I supposed dust just wasn’t pretty enough to draw my attention. I wasn’t going to make any excuses for being a magical magpie — not even to myself. Such things were in my DNA, after all.

I swiped my left hand across the runes nearest to me.

“What is it?” Kandy asked.

“Um,” I answered. “I can’t move my feet.”

“What?”

“Step back,” I said.

Warner and Kandy took a step away from the altar to stand on the second stair of the dais. I stared at the incomprehensible runes, glowing blue before me now. “It’s sorcerer magic, but I can’t read it.”

“Even an expert would need hours to discern the runes, alchemist,” Warner said. “Many are interchangeable. The intent of the use is usually key to the spell.”

Wasn’t that sweet? The sentinel was trying to make me feel better about my ignorance. Yeah, I kind of missed Kett right now. Who knew I’d prefer tough-love mentorship. But then, Warner wasn’t my mentor — he was an equal. Or at least I should be seeing him that way.

I cleared more dust to reveal more runes. The magic that was binding my feet to the dais crept up my calves.

Kandy moaned, “Is that stone?”

I looked down, assuming that the magic would appear the same way it tasted. But my feet now appeared to be encased in stone.

I glanced back up at the statue that stood with her hand outstretched across the altar from me. “Same stone,” I said. “She tried to touch the box?”

“Trying to move it seems to be the trigger,” Warner said. “It obviously encased whoever she was, but more quickly. From the rate it’s attaching to you, I assume you can break free?”

The stone spell spread up and over my knees. It didn’t hurt, but it was exceedingly distracting. I ran my fingertips along the runes, finding a spot that appeared to be a circle with five grooves.

“Alchemist?” Warner asked again. “You can break the hold of the spell, can’t you?”

“Haven’t tried yet,” I muttered. “Kandy, toss me the key.”

The stone made it up to my waist as I caught the key that Kandy threw.

“To delay seems moot,” Warner said. He sounded like he was attempting to modulate the harshness of his tone.

“Gotcha, sentinel,” I said. “But I’d like to figure it out properly, you know?”

“No,” he growled, as the stone climbed up underneath my breasts. “I don’t ‘you know.’ ”

Ignoring him, I pressed the key into the indentation. The dais absorbed it. Something shifted in the magic of the runes, but the stone continued to roll up over my shoulders and started to spread down my arms.
 

“Well, that didn’t work,” I muttered.

“You disabled the spell from triggering again, Jade. Not from its current manifestation.”

If Warner’s use of my first name wasn’t an indication of how angry he was, his tone certainly conveyed his ire. I couldn’t see his face, because as the stone spell crawled its way up my neck, I was having a difficult time moving my head. As it hit the edge of my jaw, I felt the first pulse of panic.

I closed my eyes to focus, reaching out to the magic of my necklace and knife. Though they were encased in the stone, they still responded to me. I drew what shielding power they offered. Then — painfully, slowly — the upward creeping of the spell stopped, just as it encased my chin.

“Jade?” Kandy asked. She sounded concerned. Scared, even. I didn’t like scaring her.

I stretched my dowser senses out to taste the magic of the stone spell. For the first time since I’d ruined it in Tofino, I wished that I still had the sword my father had commissioned as a vessel for my alchemist powers. But the katana was hidden away now in a treasure trove from which I’d plucked the key to the map and the fortress — filled with and twisted around Sienna’s dark magic.

That was a mystery for another day. Unless I didn’t manage to break out of the stone spell.

So, yeah, it would certainly have been handy to have the sword now.

I focused on the flavors filling my mouth in an attempt to sort through the magic. If I could understand it, I could try to manipulate it.

I tasted rich, fertile earth. “Mushrooms. Moss. And something almost sweet … honeysuckle or …”

“What?” Warner asked.

“The magic,” Kandy answered. “She’s tasting the magic.”

Now that I’d identified the root of the spell, I attempted to channel its magic into my necklace. The stone crept farther around the back of my head, even as it covered my mouth.

“Jade!” Kandy shouted, but her cry was muffled as the stone poured into my ears.

I’m not going to panic. I’m not going to panic. No panicking. Come on, Jade! You’re a freaking alchemist! And a half-dragon. What would a dragon do now?

I visualized the stone everywhere it touched my skin. I visualized my magic coating me like a protective layer. Then, just as the stone flooded over the top of my head, I visualized thousands of spikes of magic shooting out of me.

The stone exploded in a burst of energy that struck Warner to my left. He stumbled down another step, shaking his head as bits of stone rained down around and behind him.

The blast hit Kandy to my right, throwing her clear of the dais altogether.

The blast hit the statue across from me, cracking it in a series of radiating hairline fractures. As I watched, those cracks began to spread, widen, and crumble.

“Kandy?” I called.

“I’m okay.”

I reached for the closed wooden box as the statue crumbled before me, revealing a young girl who looked to be about four years old. Same clothing and everything, but with a younger person inside them.

“What the hell?” I murmured, even as I felt Warner step up on the dais behind me.

The child opened her eyes, and for a moment, I could have sworn they glowed with the golden magic of the portals. But then they cleared to light brown orbs that were way too large for her gaunt face.

No child should be that close to starved. The circlet that the woman-sized statue had worn fell down around the girl’s neck. Her long, light brown hair looked as if it had never been cut.

There was nothing childlike about the intensity of her sooty, sweet magic, though.

Not even remotely hampered by the bodice and skirt that were now far too large for her, she lunged across the altar for the box. “Mine!” she declared. Her accent was so heavily English and posh, it was disconcerting to hear it coming out of a child’s mouth.

I lifted the box that contained the five-strand braids, holding it out of her reach. With the box clear of the altar, I could feel the intense magic thrumming within it. It momentarily scrambled my brain, which wasn’t completely clear of the stone spell yet — discombobulating me just long enough for the child to scramble up and across the altar, and to try to wrestle the wooden box from my grasp.