Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
They borrowed horses from Froley. Nocren debated having Calya ride behind him, but she insisted she could manage on her own. He set the pace, trying to balance mindfulness of her stamina with a sense of foreboding that grew every minute that slipped by.
For her part, Calya kept up with minimal complaint, but the lack of griping did nothing to settle Nocren’s nerves.
They rode single file down the neglected backroad in terse silence.
An occasional curse when her horse jolted her in the saddle or a branch scratched at her face was the only sound she made.
The tension lingering between them wasn’t helped by his mediocre attempt—singular—to have a conversation.
When she gave only a monotone, short reply with nothing in the way of continuation, he gave up.
He was a shit conversationalist, anyway, accustomed to having small talk die out around him.
Never mind that silences between them hadn’t been so ugly before.
Maybe Calya was simply preoccupied with the task before them. When he’d chanced a look over his shoulder, she hadn’t paid him any attention. A furrow creased her otherwise smooth brow, her gaze not vacant but her mind elsewhere.
They bypassed the turnoff to the old site, the road growing even more overgrown and dilapidated as they followed a course going toward the point Lily had indicated.
After another hour of gradual climbing, the horses pushed through a thicket to stumble onto a new road.
Not one of uniform cobbles, but hardpacked dirt and gravel, wide enough to fit a horsedrawn cart.
They halted, Calya’s horse pawing at the ground. Even with a shod hoof, it barely scraped the surface.
“This didn’t get here by accident.”
“No, it didn’t,” Nocren agreed grimly. He motioned for them to move off the road, following it from the overgrowth on the side.
It didn’t take long for them to reach a small clearing, the road leading to the foothills of the eastern mountains.
A few structures had been erected within the clearing, though two weren’t buildings so much as large shipping containers that had been repurposed.
A spindly tower rose up at the far edge, bracketed by trees, though for what purpose Nocren didn’t know.
The tower was hardly more than layers of scaffolding, the few platforms too thin and paltry to hold much weight.
A single person, maybe, but he wouldn’t dare climb it in any weather but the lightest breeze.
Aside from marked paths through the clearing, the remaining bare ground was sectioned off into strips, wards marking each corner. They reminded Nocren of garden plots, in a way. Plots of bare dirt, the air distorted around the perimeter by the heavy containment spells in the wards.
Calya dismounted to crouch beside a plot, tilting her head to see the ward’s sides. “It’s similar to the ones Anadae designed, but not the same.”
He joined her on the ground. Each ward was capped by a chunk of clear quartz, with several more chips set into the wooden shaft. The amalgamation of different strains of magic exuded was enough to make Nocren feel ill after less than a minute of close proximity.
Calya was similarly affected. She backed away, her mouth working as if to rid herself of a foul taste. “Goddess. I’m not even magical and I can feel the pulse of these things.”
A wisp of light swirled within each ward’s stone cap. It emitted a faint glow, more gray than the golden-yellow Nocren was accustomed to seeing when one called on their magic. Squinting through the rippling barrier created around each plot, he focused on the ground. “Does that look wrong to you?”
“It’s dirt. I’ve never seen Eylle’s poison, so I wouldn’t know what it looked like. However”—Calya waved her hand to indicate their surroundings—“considering the context, I’d say everything about this place is very fucking wrong.”
Nocren grimaced. He looked around, but there was no one in sight.
No movement. Even the wind had gone dead still.
Yet, unlike the previous site, the silence here carried an eerie quality.
Not one of abandonment, but as if everyone had simply vanished.
There was a sense of life to the emptiness, as if all the people had merely been plucked out of the setting, like pieces from a board while the game was still in play.
“Come on,” Calya murmured, heading toward the closest of the shipping containers.
Loosening his knives in the sheaths at his waist and chest, Nocren followed close behind. Tensed for danger, he held himself ready for anything as Calya pushed open the door.
The container was as empty as the rest of the site.
Empty of people, but signs of activity—recent activity—abounded.
Tables pulling double duty as both desks and workstations filled every inch of the interior.
The surfaces were covered with storage crate shelving holding logbooks and all manner of papers, cups of pencils and pens, inkwells and corked bottles.
Someone had even managed to cram a teapot on a warmer stand into a corner.
Nocren gingerly touched the side of the vessel only to find it cold, the warmer’s candle long since gone out. But the contents of the pot itself weren’t that old. Cold, yes, but not evaporated to nothing. The liquid that remained was unspoiled.
The tables told a similar story: ink dried on the nibs of neglected dip pens, but the inkwells themselves were still mostly wet. The lamps on the walls burned, oil levels low in their reservoirs.
Nocren moved to examine a large technical drawing on a scroll that spanned the full width of the back table. “It’s like everyone just… stepped out.”
“But to where?” Calya muttered. “And why? No, wait, I think I can answer that one.”
He looked her way. She had her notebook out again, flipping through pages as she compared her notes to a logbook on the table in front of her.
“They’re all records of earth magic trials.
Containment… and breaches.” She opened another heavy ledger, scattering loose papers that were tucked at the front.
“Expense reports. Brint, you shit-for-brains, lying weasel. I’d be impressed if I wasn’t so pissed.
” She met Nocren’s eyes. “I guess we know where the people from his old project went. Mostly know,” she amended, looking at the container devoid of anyone besides them.
Nocren traced the lines of the drawing in front of him.
It was somewhere between a concept and a blueprint, detailing a series of excavated rooms and tunnels in the hills abutting the clearing, all built around a pool underground.
More lines and arrows indicated a pattern of flow into and out of the pool, though he couldn’t read the symbols written at various parts along the cycle.
A smaller sheet of paper, letter-sized and bearing the Coalition crest—a scale and coins— embossed at the top bore a quick sketch of a grassy-looking plant on one side, and one of the same plant transitioning to grow blade-shaped leaves interspersed with large, frilly flowers, on the other.
Reacts to contaminated ground. Preventative to curative under right conditions—needs high concentration.
The note was signed simply S. Unease burrowed beneath Nocren’s skin as he backed away from the table.
Calya was going through each of the logbooks on the table.
She tapped a chart pushed to one corner.
“Some kind of schedule, though it’s hard to say exactly what the parameters are.
Seems to cycle through on a weekly period, minus the ones scratched out.
” She motioned next to a small tray containing several polished stones, each etched with a single rune.
“These seem to be some kind of safety mechanism. They’ve got their own paperwork and everything. ”
Nocren ran his thumb across the rune, testing it with a spark of his magic. The etching flashed gold before fading. “It’s a neutralizing agent. These are enchanted for earth magic.” He picked one up. “Probably for those plots outside.”
He went back out, Calya in tow, and tossed the stone into the closest bed of dirt.
The stone blazed with golden light as it passed through the barrier.
It landed on the ground and burst apart with a loud pop, faint curls of steam billowing up.
A sizzle filled the air along with an acrid smell, and fine grains of soil shifted along the surface.
The light in the ward’s stones flared, then went out, the invisible barrier dropping away.
Using the butt of a ward, Nocren brushed it through the dirt. It felt dry and gritty, more like sand than anything else.
“Huh.” Calya considered the plot. “Guess the Coalition weren’t being completely careless.”
“Aside from trying to make something like Eylle’s poison here, you mean.
” Nocren looked toward the hills rising at the back of the clearing.
Despite the apparent efficacy of the neutralizing stones, his sense of foreboding wasn’t comforted.
If anything, it grew worse. “This way. I think they’re dug into the rock. ”
Leaving the horses to their own devices, they found a door set into a natural crevice.
Nocren held it open as he ushered Calya through, his fingers brushing the side of her arm.
She glanced sideways at him, her expression unreadable.
But she didn’t flinch away, and as they crept through the tunnel, she followed a step closer to him than she had when they’d first set out.
The tunnel opened into a deep cavern. A mixture of light sources kept the space somewhat illuminated.
They hadn’t traveled very far, and bright spots higher up on the walls and ceiling suggested breaks in the stone.
More scaffolding was littered throughout the cave, with torches and lamps betraying the construction’s scant, temporary nature.
A pair of torches across the way marked a ramp up to a room built into the wall.