Chapter 19
Nena’s smallholding lookedas rundown and dilapidated as she’d said it was.
She was a victim, Theo reminded himself. While she’d been explaining her inability to work, he’d recalled his own strange feelings of befuddlement, and he had only been exposed to it for a few hours. She lived on the edge of the spell, and when the wind blew her way, she would have had no escape from a blight she couldn’t see.
He and Melodie were on foot, and it had taken them twenty minutes to reach the broken gate into Nena’s property from the inn, the road curving gently up the hill, but winding to the right side.
He’d stopped to look down the rutted path that led to her house, hidden by a line of trees with just the roofline visible, but Melodie grabbed his arm as he turned to walk on, toward Gus’s meeting spot, her grip strong enough to surprise him.
“Stop.”
He froze, allowing her to pull him right up against her.
“What is it?” he breathed the word into her ear.
“A spell.” She drew him through the gate, toward Nena’s house, and then off the drive, walking along the broken fence line, so they were still moving parallel to the road, over rough ground.
“Here.” She pointed to a spot on the track that was in line with the only pole that wasn’t rotting away.
He saw another pole on the opposite side of the road. “A trip wire?” he asked.
“Something that looks a bit like a spider’s web,” she said. “Might be that it even feels like one when you touch it.”
A warning system.
Theo didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t see the danger around him. He was blind in this fight.
“It looks as if he’s set it up to give him a warning every time someone comes down the road. Kandra Gus must set it off each time.” Melodie put her hands on the fence, looking back at the web, and Theo boosted her over it.
She sent him a quick look he found difficult to read, and then he vaulted over the fence to join her on the road.
“Gus said it takes Marchant about half an hour to get to the meeting place after he rings the bell, but either it takes longer than that, because instead of coming when he hears the bell, he leaves as soon as Gus activates the warning web, or it doesn’t take Marchant long to get there, but he doesn’t show himself immediately, and lies in wait to make sure Gus hasn’t double-crossed him.” Theo stared at the road, seeing nothing, although he did notice both poles holding the magical web were new. That was something to look out for. Marchant maintained what was useful to him, but left everything else. The new poles were stark against the rotting wood of the others.
“He’s cautious,” Melodie said. “Almost paranoid.”
“This is a man who turned me into a goat rather than juggle me and the children.” Theo shook his head. “Cautious doesn’t begin to describe it.”
“He’s afraid.” Melodie crouched down, although she didn’t get any closer to the web, and looked from one side of the road to the other. “He eliminates all risk to himself, as much as possible. He’s a coward.”
That rang true. The problem was, cowards were usually the most dangerous adversaries, in Theo’s experience.
“What are you looking for?” Theo couldn’t see anything at all, and he felt on edge. Every rustle of the bushes that lined the road, every bird call, suddenly seemed full of menace.
“I’m trying to see how he’s alerted when the web is broken.” She moved to the middle of the road and looked over her shoulder at him, then crouched down again, lay on her back, head toward the invisible web, and wriggled toward it.
Her hair caught under her, and she stopped, grabbed it in a hand, twisted it and lay it over her shoulder, then carefully continued moving back.
He said nothing, leaving her to concentrate, but he drew his sword. He could do nothing to help her, but he could make sure she was safe.
After a few minutes, she wiggled back, and her shirt road up on her stomach, showing him a smooth, bared midriff.
He slid his sword back in its scabbard and extended his hand. She reached up to him so he could lift her back to her feet. “What did you find?”
She made a sound of exasperation as she tucked her shirt back in. “I didn’t find anything. Maybe there’s a second item linked to this trap that he keeps close. It could react in some way when the web is touched. I can’t see anything that would fly or travel to warn him.”
“He has a lot of tricks,” Theo said. “The rope to turn me into a goat. The net he gave to Gus. This web. The spell in the forest.”
“If what Kandra Gus says is true, he collects things.” She stopped suddenly. “Like me.”
“What have you collected?” Theo frowned.
“Lots of things, through the years. If they’re dangerous, I burn them. And the benign magical items I find, I put in the hands of people I think can best use them. But there are a few I’ve kept. A protection bead that I worked into this ring.”
She held it up. “It’s how I was able to break free from the confusion trap in the forest yesterday, at least enough to go looking for it.”
Theo took her hand, studied the ring. It was made of rose gold and the design was a simple flower, with rose gold petals and a smooth, pink quartz bead in the middle. It looked inexpensive, but if this ring could warn its wearer of danger, he knew it was worth a fortune.
“I’m glad you had it,” he said. He and Melodie would most likely also be prisoners without it.
“I have a silver brooch, too. But the magic in that is weak, and I can’t see what it does. It may be the magic is so depleted, it isn’t possible to tell, so I’ve kept it to be cautious. And I have a book of health remedies. I only found it last month, and I haven’t found the right person to give it to,” she said. Then she lifted a shoulder. “I also have a handkerchief that has protective magic woven into it, but it’s for a very specific person, so it is useless to anyone else. It reminds me of someone who saved me long ago, so I’ve kept it for sentimental reasons.”
“So this man can see spell work like you, do you think?” Theo said. “And has chosen to make it his livelihood?”
“If he’d stuck to items, that would be one thing, although it seems he has dealt in very dark work. But he’s taken people.” Melodie drew in a breath. “People like himself. Like me.” She shook her head. “My father’s greatest fear was that someone would discover my ability and take me. People come to Grimwalt if they think their child has any magical talent because they think they’ll be safer here, but this man lives in Grimwalt.”
“And he was trawling for victims in Kassia and Cervantes.” Theo wondered if he’d already cleared out the victims he could find around where he lived.
It was not a good thought.
“Do you think he took the children because they’re magical, or because they had some magical items with them?” She frowned.
“He said to me . . .” Theo realized he had not told her exactly what had happened. Most of it had come back to him in short flashes, but since this morning, he thought he remembered everything. “He said I shone with talent, just like the children. He also appeared out of nowhere, so we need to understand he may well have a cloak of invisibility. And his hand . . .” He remembered the hand flung out at him, and couldn’t remember whether Marchant held anything in it. But as he’d swung his sword, that hand seemed to flick something at him and all the air had been pulled from his lungs.
“What about his hand?” Melodie’s own hand was still resting lightly in his from his inspection of her ring, and she turned it, grasping his hand to comfort him.
“He gestured to me and it felt like ice against my skin. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.”
Melodie stared at him, and there was fear in her eyes. “That is a lot of magical power for us to overcome.”
“I should have told you this before I asked you to come along, but I only remembered all the details this morning.”
“That’s what you were thinking about this morning, staring up at the ceiling?” she asked.
“No. That wasn’t what I was thinking about.” He bent his head and brushed a kiss on her lips.
The sound of something scurrying in the thick hedge that bordered the road forced him to pull back, listening.
“My ring is quiet,” Melodie told him.
He met her bright gaze, and gave a nod. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
He forced his attention from her and focused on the world around him. It seemed to fade away when he got too close to her, but now was not the time to enjoy that.
But when this was done, he would. He most certainly would.
They walked for another ten minutes, until he saw a path through the hedge. Given the footprints visible in the soft sand, he guessed this was the way to the meeting spot.
He stopped on the road, waiting for Melodie to reach his side.
“See anything?” he asked.
“No. Let me go first, though.”
He didn’t want to let her, but right now, she could see the danger better than he could.
He gave a nod, keeping close behind her as she began down the path.
The hedge disappeared in a few steps, and they were suddenly in a gloomy clearing, surrounded by young growth trees, which filtered the light green.
There was the bell, sitting on a massive tree stump.
Melodie moved around it slowly. “The bell is magical,” she said. “But that’s the only thing that is, that I can see.”
“I’m going to work my way through the trees,” Theo told her. He wanted to see if Marchant had a place where he could stand and watch Gus before he made himself known.
He found the gap in the trees which seemed the most likely place to enter the clearing from the opposite side, and a few steps back he found a well-worn spot with a clear view of the clearing if you crouched down.
He watched Melodie walking around, and then she stopped. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. He didn’t know if she was listening for danger, or enjoying the cool green of the woods and the sound of birdsong and the babble of a nearby brook.
It was idyllic if you took away the reason they were here.
The light filtered through the leaves to touch her long dark hair, illuminating the golden strands within the dark brown, and gilding her beautiful face.
Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, and she turned, looking toward the road.
He was in the clearing as fast as he could move.
Her gaze met his, and she lifted a finger to her lips.
He stepped close to her, and pulled her even closer before he bent his lips to her ear. “Danger?”
She shook her head, then hesitated. “Not sure. Someone is coming, though.”
He could hear them, too, now, coming toward them from the road.
With no good way out, and the possibility that someone was here to ring the bell, and draw Marchant to a meeting, he guided her with him between the trees, where he found a place to hide where Marchant, even if he crouched down in his hiding spot, wouldn’t see them.
It was a tight fit with two of them, and she wound her arms around him, and he her, so they were tight up against each other.
“Gus? You here?”
It was Nena.
Had she seen them?
Or maybe she had caught a brief glimpse of them as they stepped off the track and down the path, and thought it must be Gus.
She stood, looking around, stared at the bell for a little while, and then backed away.
As she left, she was muttering under her breath.
“Wait,” Theo whispered to Melodie as she started to pull away. “She might have triggered the web.”
She gave a nod in response and they stood together in silence.
Eventually, Theo decided Nena must have come over the fence and bypassed the web. It was a lucky break.
But he gave it just a minute more before he reluctantly stepped away.
“All right?” he asked her, still in a whisper.
She pushed her forehead into his chest for a moment, looking down, then tipped her head to look at him. Gave a nod.
There was a lot he wanted to ask her, because there was all kinds of things going on behind those eyes of hers, but now was most definitely not the time and place.
“Let’s get back to the inn and get Gus,” he said. “And put an end to this.”