Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser Series Book 5) (22 page)

Warner didn’t answer. He and Kett were hunched over me, staring down at the map, then up at the sheer granite cliff face before us.

The patches of snow on the bare stone had increased the more we’d climbed, but not as much as I would have thought. Moss and some type of low bush still appeared to be attempting to grow, but I hadn’t seen a tree for miles. The chill cut uncomfortably through my jeans, and sitting on the ground was no picnic for my ass either. I would have bought a longer ski jacket, but anything that puffy and my hips really didn’t go great together.

“This one is hidden way better than the first,” I said.

“No tourist brochures,” Warner agreed.

“No wolf,” Kett said.

Yeah, I missed Kandy too. Kett and Warner weren’t exactly chatty or chummy while walking through the darkness of the Andes. Kandy knew how to mix serious business with fun.

“We could go around,” Warner said. “The entrance might be on the other side.”

Kett shook his head. “Not necessary. I believe we are here. Dowser?” He gestured toward the craggy rock wall before us.

“You think the mountain peak is the fortress?” I asked as I tucked the map into my satchel and stood. “I can’t feel any magic here. Nothing like the doorway into the pocket of time that hid the first instrument.”

“This won’t be the same,” Warner said. “Each instrument was created, or collected, or contained by different Adepts. The magic will be different.”

Warner and Kett stepped away from me, winging out to the left and right of my back to give my dowser senses space.

I shivered despite my fleece and cashmere knitwear. Then I realized it wasn’t the cold air or the chilled stone I was feeling, but the lack of magic underneath my feet. I’d been surrounded by peppermint and chocolate and cherries, so I hadn’t registered what was missing.

Reaching out with my dowser senses, I stepped toward the rock face before me, but I still couldn’t taste any other magic.

I pressed my palm to the cold granite. It was so icy I was fairly certain I’d lose some skin if I lifted my hand away before my body heat could warm it.

“Nothing,” I called back over my shoulder. “I got nothing.”

Then the pile of boulders to my left tried to bite my head off.

Fortunately, I noticed.

I ducked and twisted away from the attack. Steely magic flooded my senses, leaving a nasty metallic taste in my mouth as it swirled around the pile of rocks that were animating before me. The massive boulders, each easily three or four feet in diameter, reformed into something with arms and a head, but no neck.

I rolled underneath the boulder creature’s second swipe, coming to a stop only inches from Warner’s boot-clad feet as he stepped over me.

I gained my feet, calling my knife into my hand as I pivoted. Kett tucked next to my left shoulder as Warner effortlessly sprung up and punched the now easily eight-foot-tall mass of rock in its head.

Not rock. Metal.

Or at least silver-infused granite. The morning light sparked back at me from everywhere it touched the creature.

Warner’s fist made contact. The sentinel grunted and something snapped.

Rock didn’t break like that. But bones did.

The boulder creature stumbled back, hitting the cliff face I’d just been touching. Then it hunkered down like a hockey goalie waiting when a fight breaks out during a game — completely ready and willing to take a swipe at anyone who skates too near the net.

Yeah, if that was the first image that came to mind when a rock creature attempted to maul me, I really had been hanging out with Kandy too much.

Anyway, the move appeared to be a retreat, but was actually a protective offensive position.

Warner landed at the exact spot from which he’d leaped, but he was cradling his right hand as he eyed the rock creature. The sentinel stretched his arm to the side, then let out a muffled groan as whatever had broken snapped back into place.

“Has that ever happened before?” Kett asked. “Is it an old injury?”

“No,” Warner answered, blunt and pissed in equal measure.

“Silver in the rock,” I said.

“I see,” Kett said. “Primitive construction, but effective. It should be oxidized, but perhaps the metallurgy maintains the polish.”

“Silver isn’t a problem for you, though,” I said, recalling the bits of information I’d gleaned from our earlier conversation. “Because you don’t believe in it, right?”

“I doubt it’s usually a problem for dragons,” Kett answered dryly.

“It’s a naturally occurring magical repellent,” I said. “A dragon holds a lot of magic.”

“Yes.” Warner stretched his arm over his head, then behind his back. “But I’m adaptable.”

Kett laughed.

The hunt was on.

I stepped forward and around to Warner’s right as Kett stepped to the left. We fanned out to block the boulder creature in, but stayed far enough apart that we wouldn’t hinder each other’s movements.

“I can’t get a read on its magic,” I said. “Definitely not sorcerer, which is what I expected.”

“Witch?” Kett asked. “Earth based?”

“No. It’s all metal, metal, metal. No earth, no chocolate, no fruit. Nothing.”

The boulder creature swiveled its head as if it was looking at each of us, then it folded its arms tighter around itself.

“Does it even have eyes?” I muttered.

“It doesn’t need eyes,” Warner answered.

“Better question,” Kett said. “What is it guarding? A door? Do we have to vanquish the creature for it to open?”

“And is it the only one?” I added, eyeing a second set of boulders to the right. “I triggered it when I touched the cliff face.”

“So it sees or feels magic,” Warner said. He glanced over at Kett, who nodded.

Both of them pulled all their tasty magic tightly inside themselves. Dampening it as much as they could. It was a technique they both excelled at. They couldn’t completely hide from me — I knew their magic too well — but I still felt suddenly alone, left with only a metallic stain on my tongue. I took it to be the taste of metallurgy, though neither the dragonfly nor the pen had tasted so nasty.

“Don’t let it hit you,” Warner growled at me.

“Yeah, figured that out already, sixteenth century,” I said with a smile.

Warner huffed. Then he and Kett stepped in separate directions into the shadows of the cliff face that the morning sun had yet to illuminate.

So, yeah. Leaving me alone under the gaze of the boulder creature. If I was going to be bait — again — I might as well own it.

I pumped my alchemist magic into my knife as I twirled it in my hand. Boulder guy’s head shifted. If I wasn’t accustomed to hanging out with a vampire who appeared to be carved out of ice, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the subtle movement.

So Warner was right about it sensing magic.

I threaded my fingers through my necklace and called up all the different magic I’d recently stored in it. Even diminished, I was hoping it would create quite a glow.

The boulder creature shifted its shoulders and stepped toward me — almost involuntarily, it seemed. This placed it slightly away from the cliff at its back, in a more accessible position.

Kett dropped down from the shadows of the cliff face where he must have scaled quickly upward. He slammed his feet into the boulder creature’s left shoulder, though I think the vampire had been aiming for its head.

The resulting boom from the two-footed slam-kick hurt my ears. The creature dipped to one side as a crack formed across its shoulder.

Warner took advantage of the creature being off-balance, pushing out from the cliff on its right to slam both his feet into the side of its head.

It stumbled closer to Kett, who’d been trying to get a grip on its head. Failing that, the vampire had wrapped himself around the creature’s cracked arm instead.

I reached for its magic again and again as it struggled, trying to figure out what fueled it and how it had been created. However, I couldn’t grab at anything beyond the creature’s metallic taste. I briefly thought about darting into the fray and stabbing it with my knife, but I was worried about all that silver breaking the jade blade like it had broken Warner’s arm.

Kett and Warner continued to wrestle and pummel the stone creature. More hairline fractures formed in its boulders, but the attacks barely managed to shift the creature more than a few feet away from the sheer rock wall behind it. Then the boulder creature abruptly spun to slam Kett back against the cliff face. This stunned the vampire enough that he fell limply to the ground.

The creature swiveled the lower section of its body and raised a thick stone leg over Kett’s head — completely ignoring Warner’s attempt to rip off its arm. The sentinel had twisted the granite limb up over the creature’s shoulder while perched on its back.

I darted around Warner, who reacted to my proximity with a vicious rolling growl filled with what sounded like German curses. Then I attempted to drag Kett out from underneath the creature. Problem was, I didn’t exactly have any place to move to quickly.

I got my hands underneath Kett’s shoulders and shifted him a couple of feet out of the way. But now we were both trapped between the cliff face and the creature.

It slammed its foot down where Kett’s head had just been, and the resulting earthquake knocked me on my ass.

Warner bellowed, then ripped its arm off.

Kett closed his hand around my wrist, dragging me underneath the opening created when the creature stumbled. We sprinted by Warner as he twisted to throw the creature’s arm away as if it were a Frisbee.

The sentinel stumbled back to join Kett and me a few feet away. As we watched, panting — or in Kett’s case, just shaking his head to clear it — the creature stepped back. Two steps was all it took to close the gap behind it, and it was hunkered down like a one-armed hockey goalie in net again.

“Jesus,” I said.

Warner let loose with another long string of vicious-sounding German. I assumed he was swearing, but all German tended to sound a bit brutal to my ear. He could have been saying anything, but just really fiercely.

Kett nodded and said something back in German, then switched to English. “We will eventually tear it to pieces.”

“This is silly,” I said. “It’s magic. There must be a magical means to disable it.”

“Magic none of us wields,” Kett said, his cool tone as close to testy as it ever got. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like being called silly, or feeling stupid, or unskilled.

I looked over to Warner. He was battered around the edges — ruffled hair, a red bruise on his cheek that was slowly fading, torn jacket and jeans — and sexier for it. He smiled at me in response to my ogling him, but then shook his head sternly. “No, Jade,” he said. “It punches like a fucking mountain.”

My smile widened at his impassioned profanity, in English this time.

“What is your suggestion, dowser?” Kett asked, calling me back to the present predicament.

“We could try to find a silversmith. You said way back that you thought Hoyt or Blackwell must employ one to get Hoyt’s curse in his silver ball bearings. But I doubt a silversmith’s magic would hold much sway here, and I loathe the idea of going to an evil sorcerer for help. A second time, I mean.”

“I doubt such sorcery would work here,” Warner said. “Unless the silversmith was exceptionally talented. Skilled enough to pull every bit of metal from the creature.”

“Enchanted metal,” I murmured. Something clicked in my mind suddenly. “I spell metal.”

“You combine vessels already containing magic together to make a new whole,” Kett said, reprimanding me lightly but pointedly.

Ignoring him, I took a step toward the boulder creature, which shifted its head to track me. Warner reached out as if to stop me, but when the creature didn’t move farther, he let me kneel on the ground.

“Some space?” I asked, probably far too snarkily for someone attempting to do something she wasn’t actually capable of doing.

Warner and Kett backed off to either side of me and dampened their magic again.

I crossed my legs, which forced my satchel to sling across my lap. Denying the cold that began to immediately seep through my jeans, I closed my eyes and let my dowser senses reach out for magic. Again, the metallic taste flooded my mouth, but I couldn’t grab or channel it. I was a witch and a dragon. Witches pulled their magic from the earth. I was sitting on an entire freaking mountain and getting nothing. Dragons were magic personified, but based on Warner’s earlier observation about feeling rejected by the earth, that must be the ultimate source of their power as well. At least in part. Guardians had something else going on — a secret rite of passage, an ascension of some sort — but that didn’t matter right now.

I opened my eyes to stare at the boulder creature, then scanned the rock all around it.

“No hidden marks,” I said. “No runes or keyholes.”

“No,” Kett said. “I see nothing like that.”

How did magical beings who weren’t witches or dragons access magic? Well, runes were important for sorcerers. They had to physically create spells to call magic, but I couldn’t write runes …

“Jesus Christ on a cupcake!” I cried, thrusting my hand into my satchel. I didn’t have to look back to feel Warner glance at Kett behind me, or the vampire shrug in response.

From the satchel, I pulled the pen that Pulou had given back to me. The pen I’d collected in Tel Aviv months ago. The pen I had assumed was simply a sorcerer-charmed gold Cartier ballpoint. But now — based on its ability to annoy the treasure keeper — I thought it might be something more. Perhaps even a form of metallurgy.

The pen that wrote runes.

Of course, I didn’t have any paper.

I uncrossed my legs and scrubbed my feet against the moss and dirt that covered the somewhat flat granite in front of me, digging up and clearing it all away until I had a fairly smooth surface about a foot and a half square.

Kneeling before this cleared space, I placed the pen in the center and pulled out my knife.

Now … what were the magic words?

“Open sesame,” I said.

Kett snorted behind me, but his disbelief didn’t shake my conviction.