The Measure of the Magic (20 page)

She did not necessarily believe all those stories. But she had witnessed at least one incident firsthand, and that was enough. When she was a little girl, she had gone into the Ashenell on a dare, leaving behind her two cousins, Pare and Freysen. Girls like her, though older, they had given her a dare and she had been stubborn enough to ignore common sense and her own instincts and accept it. She had gone in
with the intention of touching the tomb that housed the most recent members of the Amarantyne family. Her word that she had done so would be good enough for them, her cousins had agreed.

Phryne would not have lied in any case—not about this or anything else that had to do with accepting a dare. She was still trying to find her place in the family, her mother recently dead, and her father already beginning to drift away. What confidence she possessed derived in part from her legacy as part Amarantyne and part Belloruus and from an iron resolve that got her through everything difficult. She employed that resolve on this night and went into the tombs and touched the one that belonged to her father’s people.

She was on her way back again, feeling strong and steady as a result of her accomplishment when she encountered the dog, a creature fully six feet high at the shoulder and perhaps a dozen feet long. It came out of nowhere to confront her, blood dripping from its jaws and eyes burning like live coals. She froze where she was, unable to move, unable to do anything but stand there and wait to see what it intended. For a long time, it regarded her, as if measuring her value against its interest. But in the end, it turned away and vanished.

She came out of the Ashenell shaking in terror, unable to do anything but run home and cower under her sheets. When morning came she was herself again and decided it must have been an apparition.

But then she heard that a man engaged in breaking into one of the tombs had been killed that same night, his wounds indicating that he had been torn apart by a creature the like of which no one could even imagine.

So she did not discount the presence of magic and of things born of that magic. She did not think the Elven people brought such things to life intentionally, but she did think their use of magic left a residue and a legacy that allowed such things to come alive on their own.

“You should wait here,” she told Xac Wen, looking at the dark shadows of the mix of trees and tombs and markers.

“You should stop talking and just follow me,” he answered back.

Without waiting to see what she would do, he walked right through the gates and into the Ashenell.
That boy’s got more courage than good sense
, she thought. But she hurried after him.

She caught up to him and took over the lead. She knew in what
section of the cemetery the Belloruus family was buried; she had been there more than once, although always in daylight except for that one unfortunate time. She also knew about the Belloruusian Arch. Constructed not long after the city and its populace had been carried out of the Cintra and resituated in this valley, it was the monument that defined the section reserved for the whole of the family and its various members.

They reached it quickly enough—it wasn’t that far from the southern gate—taking a direct path through the tombs in an effort to reach their destination while it was still dark. Phryne found herself searching the shadows the entire way, memories of her encounter with the ghost dog suddenly as fresh as the day it had happened. But they encountered nothing and no one, and arrived without incident.

That should have been the end of it. She was where she was supposed to be, where her grandmother had told her to come. But Mistral was nowhere to be found.

Phryne stood at a distance of perhaps twenty feet from the Belloruusian Arch, weighing her next move. But she quickly grew impatient. Dawn was approaching, and people would be out and about. Unwilling to just stand in place any longer and resigned to whatever fate awaited her, she decided to take a closer look.

X
AC WEN WATCHED HER GO
, hanging back and studying the arch as if it might hold some clue he could decipher. He kept thinking something would appear that would explain the message from Mistral Belloruus. Why had she summoned Phryne here? What was it she wanted? He thought of Phryne’s grandmother the way most people did—a very peculiar, reclusive old lady who knew how to do things that other people didn’t. Like how to do magic, some of it dangerous. He kept wondering if Phryne’s insistence on finding her had something to do with that. After all, a little magic might be useful when you were dealing with people like Isoeld Severine.

Phryne was almost to the arch now, moving cautiously, taking her time. Xac didn’t think this was a trap, but he couldn’t be sure. He wished that Tasha were there. Big, strong Tasha, who was a match for
anything. Or even clever Tenerife. But there was only Phryne and himself, and that seemed less than adequate given the extent of the danger they were in.

He started forward now, not wanting the girl to get too far ahead of him. He needed to be close if something happened, and he didn’t want to have regrets about that later.

He no sooner completed the thought than Phryne Amarantyne walked beneath the arch and disappeared.

For a moment, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. There one minute, gone the next—that wasn’t possible. Nothing had happened to cause it; she had just disappeared into thin air. He rushed ahead, blinking rapidly, trying to find her in the mix of gloom and shadows. But she wasn’t there. She was gone.

“Phryne!” he called aloud, throwing caution aside.

He plunged through the space beneath the Belloruusian Arch, but nothing happened. He wheeled back and rushed through again. He turned back once more and placed himself directly beneath the arch. He tried every different approach he could imagine, trying to put himself on the path she had taken, at one point even standing in the faint prints of her boots.

Nothing.

He stared around in dismay. What was he supposed to do now? How could he find her? Would she come back on her own from wherever she had gone, or was she in trouble?

He stayed by the arch all that day, waiting for Phryne Amarantyne to return. When she didn’t, he decided there was only one thing to do. He had to go back to Tasha and Tenerife and tell them everything that had happened. He had to get help.

At dawn the following day, a food sack and water skin slung over one shoulder, he set off for Aphalion Pass.

P
ANTERRA QU AND PRUE LISS TRAVELED NORTH
out of Glensk Wood through the remainder of the night, following roads and paths that led toward Arborlon and the Elves. Prue was using a walking staff now, one cut from a hickory limb by Pan shortly after they had set out so that she could continue to give the impression that she was blind and needed help in making her way. They had agreed that even though she could see as well as any sighted person she would be better off not revealing the truth of this. It would lend others a false impression of how vulnerable she was and give her an advantage she might not otherwise have. Given the situation in which they found themselves, any advantage they could gain was not to be passed up.

Nevertheless, Prue continued to be decidedly unhappy about the price exacted. She was growing used to the idea that she could not discern colors, could only see shades of gray and white and black, but it did not ease the fresh pain that each new reminder of her disability created. She told herself that she should not let this bother her, that
colors were lovely and sometimes even wondrous, but that being able to see, whether in colors or not, was what really mattered. And while this was true, it made the fact of it no easier to bear. There was a subtlety to the emotional pain she experienced that deepened as time passed and it became increasingly clear that not only was her ability to see colors forever gone but her inability to adapt to that loss was deepening.

She thought more than once to talk it out with Pan because she had always talked out everything with him. But she chose against doing so here because it would only remind him of the fact that he was the cause. Better that she suffer quietly and not make him share in her pain. In any case, he could never know the extent and nature of that pain, because it hadn’t happened to him.

So they talked of other things.

“There are still a good many old-world weapons out there,” she told him at one point. “Deladion Inch had some of them, all in good working order, all deadly. He had vehicles that ran on solar power and explosives that were no bigger than my hand but could destroy whole buildings. If he had them, others will have them, too.”

“But not so many maybe.” Pan was peering off into the forest, always paying attention to his surroundings. “Besides, they weren’t enough to save him, were they?”

“They might have been, if he hadn’t chosen to rescue me.”

Pan nodded. “For which I will always be grateful. It says something about him that he decided to come at all. He didn’t know you, didn’t have any reason to make rescuing you his business. He did it for Sider.”

“Oh, I think he did it for himself, too.” She gave him a quick smile as he looked over. “No, it’s true. He liked challenging himself. I think that’s what made life worth something to him.”

He nodded and looked away. She wondered if the look of her eyes troubled him. He didn’t seem to want to focus on them. Maybe he found her ugly or a little less human now. She didn’t like to think that he would be this way, but she would understand if he were. She didn’t like it any better than he did. She didn’t want to look at herself anymore, either.

“I want you to know …” He stopped midsentence, shook his head, and kept walking. For a minute, he didn’t say anything more. Then he
looked at her anew, and said, “I just want to say again how sorry I am that this happened.”

She gave him a fresh smile. “I know. But I like hearing you say it. It makes it all a little easier.”

“Do you think that what he did—the King of the Silver River—that it sharpened your instincts?”

She thought about it. In the time since she had returned from wherever the Faerie creature had taken her and resumed her trek home, she had been given ample opportunity to discover if she had been helped or not. It seemed to her that her instincts were fully restored. More than once, they had warned her of dangers she could not see, of creatures in hiding, sometimes directly in her path. When she changed course, the feelings would diminish.

“They are much stronger,” she said finally. “I could tell coming back to Glensk Wood. Are they strong enough to warn me consistently and accurately? I can’t be sure yet. I have to wait and see. I have to trust in what he told me. And I do trust him, Pan. I still think the exchange was a fair bargain.”

She had noticed something else, too, although she didn’t choose to talk about it just yet. As they walked, traveling through the gloom and shadows of the woods, alone amid the trees save for those things that lived there, she found she was able to detect, identify, and isolate almost everything that drew breath. She couldn’t always tell exactly what she was sensing, but she could tell if it was big or little, safe or dangerous, lying in wait or sleeping, hunting or simply moving about. It was a subtle thing, filled with nuances she had not recognized before, and it gave her insights that filled her with unexpected confidence.

“How far do you want to travel today?” he asked.

She shook her head dismissively. “As far as you want.”

“But you’ve already traveled several days just to reach me. You haven’t had time to rest. You haven’t slept in how long?”

“Not so long, Pan. I can keep going. I feel all right.” She saw the way he was looking at her, and she could see the doubt in his eyes. Apparently doubt wasn’t a color. “Really, I do.”

They walked through the remainder of the morning, climbing out of the valley floor and onto the higher, more open expanses of the
lower slopes while staying below the snow line. They passed isolated homes and farms, and once or twice they saw people and exchanged waves. The sun rose and the day brightened, and the heavy mists receded far enough up into the mountains that the air warmed and dampness of the dawn’s dew faded. Hunting birds circled in the skies overhead, and patches of paintbrush and avalanche lilies appeared amid the rocks.