Chapter Ten
A thaumaturgically dynamic landscape is a nonlinear system.
In other words, it’s prone to going boom in all directions.
Blazing Trails , W.H. Jackson
“Oh hello there, you’re the Tappets, aren’t you?” Professor Jackson peered at them with curiosity as they helped him up out of the sodden grass where he’d thrown himself as the rock fell. “The ones with the weird marriage?”
“That sounds about right,” Elodie muttered under her breath. The fact gossip about her relationship with Gabriel had reached the literal edge of Britain did not surprise her, considering the nature of academia. But she kept her response brisk, professional. “Tarrant, sir. Emergency response team. Are you all right?”
“I think I’ve squashed the sandwich in my pocket,” the old professor said, patting his tweed jacket (and thus squashing the sandwich in its aforementioned pocket, which had in fact survived the fall). “Bother, it was chicken too.”
Dismayed, he shook his head, sending his white cloud of hair fluttering and making him stumble. “I am a tad woozy. But I’ve not had a cup of tea in two days, so that’s only to be expected.” He rubbed one eye as if this might improve his sense of balance—applying his finger to the task directly through the frame of his spectacles, which proved to be without lenses. Then, with sudden, belated awareness of the diaphanous cyanic smoke drifting around them, he grimaced. “Oh dear, that can’t be good.”
“What happened?” Gabriel demanded, arms crossed as he frowned severely at the man.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Jackson replied with all the speed and fervency of a naughty boy caught in some trouble that was plainly and incontrovertibly his fault. “I just looked at the rock.”
“Just looked,” Gabriel repeated, dubious.
The professor shrugged. “Maybe a modicum of poking was involved. But the etchings on its surface are so fascinating. And how was I to know it was a thaumaturgic object? It doesn’t smell like it.” He pulled the flattened sandwich from his pocket, grimaced at the lint speckled on it, then took a large bite.
Elodie set down her ER kit and crouched to inspect the tor more closely. “These etchings really are fascinating,” she said, tilting her head as she visually traced them.
“Runes?” Gabriel asked without ceasing to stare at Jackson.
“No, circles and spirals, remarkably alike those on the Newgrange tomb.”
Gabriel looked over then, interest lighting his expression. Newgrange was the site of the greatest thaumaturgic mineral deposit in all Ireland, and considering how magical in general the island was, that really was saying something. Elodie grinned up at him. A new trove, their mutual gaze said. (Also, God, I want to kiss you , but each translated this in the other as eye strain.)
A gasp sounded as Mumbers and Algernon arrived on the scene. Elodie could not discern which of them had gasped—Algernon with horror at the faint thaumaturgic smoke, or Mumbers in excitement.
“Ancient pagan designs!” the latter exclaimed. “I simply must get a picture!” He pulled a sketchbook from his jacket pocket and passed it to Algernon. “Will you draw me beside the rock? And Miss Tarrant, stand with me!”
“ Mrs. Tarrant,” Gabriel growled, taking off his kit and pushing his sleeves up farther as if he were planning to challenge Mumbers to a boxing match.
“Actually, I don’t think these designs are ancient after all,” Elodie said, her excited grin fading as she ran a finger over the stone’s surface. “The indentations are sharp-edged, not weathered, which suggests they’re only recently made. Also, there’s no lichen on the rock.”
“Knob,” Professor Jackson said through a mouthful of bread and chicken. Everyone looked at him confusedly. “Devil’s Knob,” he clarified, waving his sandwich at the monolith. “It marks a doorway that Arawn takes out of Annwn on Nos Calan Gaeaf, according to the locals.”
“The Welsh king of the underworld!” Mumbers exclaimed, his eyes growing wide as if expecting Arawn to appear at any moment and claim his soul (which would be a jolly sensagger indeed!).
“Folklore often conveys local knowledge about thaumaturgic activity, and serves as a warning that people should stay away,” Gabriel grumbled, clearly wishing the three men would take that warning to heart.
“I doubt it’s a warning,” Professor Jackson argued, “considering Mr. Parry, the innkeeper, offered to bring me up here on a sightseeing tour, complete with a chance to see and pat one of Arawn’s supernatural hounds, all for the cost of one shilling.”
“There’s no sign of thaumaturgic material in the ground itself,” Elodie said as she bent over the hole from whence the monolith had toppled. “And this worm population appears healthy and normal. I’m guessing what happened is that the thaumaturgic energy we’re seeing here is an overspill from another source, and the rock has absorbed it. In fact, I think—oops!” She straightened hastily, batting at a strand of magic that sizzled in her hair.
“The thaumaturgic pressure is building,” Gabriel said, sounding like he was talking about the weather—although maybe not that, considering their profession, but some other, boring subject. He frowned at his thaumometer. “Overspill or not, this is powerful energy, and I don’t know that the granite will contain it for long. Judging from these readings, there could be a perforative eructation at any minute.”
“A perfor-what?” Mumbers asked warily.
“It’s about to go boom,” Elodie explained, fisting her hands then opening them to illustrate.
“We’re all going to die!” Algernon wailed.
“Nonsense,” Professor Jackson scoffed. “You’re perfectly safe, trust me.”
Crack!
A split opened in the monolith, blue sparks shooting from it. Everyone ducked.
“Aaahhhh!” Professor Jackson cried out, flinging up his sandwich as it spontaneously metamorphosed into a large white hen. The bird flapped frantically, squawking and pecking at his face, then it fell to the ground and scurried off while the professor was swaying in shock at having had his carnivorism literally come back to bite him.
“Aaahhhh!” Algernon screamed, because he was Algernon.
“I say, jolly good fun!” Mumbers exclaimed, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead.
The air around the monolith began to glow with a pulsing silver radiance. Elodie and Gabriel stepped closer to it.
“The tip is blue,” Gabriel noted. “It’s going to discharge from there.”
Elodie grinned. “Would it be unladylike of me to point out the phallic imagery?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s it pointing?”
They squinted at the horizon. “Aberystwyth,” Gabriel said.
“Egad!” Professor Jackson exclaimed. “There are medieval books in the university library that will cause mayhem if magic hits them!”
Pivoting on a heel, Elodie gestured urgently at the others. “We have to turn it! Hurry, before it erupts!”
“It’s a whopping great rock,” Mumbers said with a laugh. “We’ll never be able to lift it.”
“The magic has eroded its relative density,” Professor Jackson said. “It’s as light as a feather.”
They arranged themselves alongside the monolith and, wrapping their arms around it, hauled it up to waist height.
“Bloody hell,” Algernon groaned. “I thought you said ‘light as a feather.’?”
“I meant a mammoth eagle feather,” Professor Jackson said.
“The lady shouldn’t be part of this work,” Mumbers spoke up nobly. “She might get hurt.”
“For God’s sake,” Elodie muttered. She looked to Gabriel. “Which direction?”
“West,” he suggested. “Send it out to sea.”
Shuffling awkwardly, they angled the monolith as directed, but an invisible force dragged against their efforts.
“It’s trying to align to the fey line,” Elodie realized.
“Ow, that was my foot you just stepped on!” Mumbers cried out.
“Was it? My apologies,” Gabriel said, his voice as stiff as the rock itself.
“Never mind feet!” Professor Jackson shouted. “No one will care about their feet if the university’s original volume of the Malleus Mephitidae explodes!”
“ The Hammer of the Stink Badgers ?” Elodie translated bemusedly.
“Exactly!”
“I can’t hold on much longer,” Algernon panted.
“Think of me, I’ve only just recovered from pleurisy!” Mumbers told him. “?‘Mortality weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.’?”
“Keep turning west,” Gabriel grumbled.
“So do the badgers have the hammer, or…?”
“West!”
“Ow! You stepped on my foot again!”
“The rock’s getting heavier!”
“Don’t drop it!”
“Surely they don’t expect people to hit badgers with a hammer? That’s not—”
CRACK!
Suddenly, the very air seemed to shatter. Elodie found herself flying backward. She smacked against the ground, pain shocking through her. One second later, Gabriel was atop her body, sheltering her as shards of sword-colored magic rained down. Wind screamed in pain. The ground buckled. All of existence strained to hold itself together.
And then, suddenly—quiet.
Elodie stared up at Gabriel. His eyes behind a fall of hair were so dark, magic would have lost itself for a thousand years in their depths. His breath was barely there. Elodie felt the same exhilaration she had when, years ago, he’d unexpectedly walked between lectures with her, discussing cartography agendas. And she felt comforted too, like the time she’d sat opposite him in the Bodleian, silently studying the teachings of Eratosthenes until the librarians evicted them at the end of the day. And it was lovely, lovely, like the slow drift of light and shadow through a small, quiet church as she watched him slide a gold ring onto her finger.
“Amazing,” Gabriel said huskily.
“Incredible,” she agreed, the word not much more than a sigh.
“The subjective alchemic transformation was remarkably specific.”
“And the voltage!” she added. “Such force from a relatively small lode!”
They scrambled up, looking around with an academic enthusiasm that was so pronounced, neither noticed their arms were touching, their hands not so much brushing against each other as mingling in a way that would have been almost unbearably thrilling under other circumstances.
The world gleamed like a tear-filled eye. The monolith was on fire, blue flames dancing along its length. A ray of energy emerged from its tip, silver-bright, angling down from the hill’s summit like a great translucent path until it struck a field almost a mile away.
“Intense,” Elodie breathed.
“It must be at least seven thousand conjures,” Gabriel said. He looked around. “Where’s my thaumometer?”
“There.” Elodie pointed to pool of copper and glass bubbling in the grass a few yards away. Then her stomach lurched as she belatedly recalled the human element of geography. “Is everyone all right?”
“Nggh,” Professor Jackson replied from where he lay on his back nearby, glasses askew.
“I want to go home!” Algernon howled as he clutched the ground. Mumbers stared dazedly at a patch of wheat that had previously been his hat.
“It didn’t reach as far as I expected,” Gabriel murmured, frowning at the thaumaturgic energy beam. Beneath it, hedges were shattering and wildflowers turning to bright dust. Birds flew up like feathered screams, trailing magic that set the air briefly alight. And where the beam met earth, fragments of rainbows swirled, as if a pot of thaumaturgic gold lay there.
“All this energy must be originating from somewhere ,” Elodie said. “Maybe the source is in that field.”
“What on earth are we going to do?” Professor Jackson asked as he pushed himself up from the ground, glasses swinging from one ear. “If you’ll excuse the little pun, ha ha.”
Elodie grinned at him. “I’m going down to take a look,” she said. Turning to her kit, she took out a utility belt containing various emergency gadgets, such as a compass and measuring tape, and began to wrap it around her waist.
“Can I come too?” Mumbers asked eagerly.
“No,” Gabriel said. He pulled a short telescope from his own kit and weighed it in his hand. Blanching, Mumbers stepped back.
“Would you help Mr. Jennings down to the village?” Elodie asked the man, smiling distractedly at him. “Professor Jackson will escort you, for your safety.”
At the sound of his name, the professor looked up from smacking his jacket pockets in search of another sandwich. “What? What?”
“Take these men back to D?lylleuad,” Elodie ordered him while checking the gauges on her portable weather station before slipping the device into her skirt pocket.
“Telegraph the Home Office to advise them of the situation here,” Gabriel added as he strapped the telescope around the calf of one leg. “We’re going to need help.”
“Also please take our kits with you,” Elodie said. “I don’t want to carry any extra load.”
“And you should probably warn Aberystwyth,” Gabriel said, “in case of spillage along the line.”
“And make sure the people of D?lylleuad are safe.”
“And most of all, don’t poke at any more things .”
“Right.” The old professor nodded in a way that made it clear he’d not processed even half of what they’d told him. “Do you want to use my bicycle?”
Elodie straightened from tucking a dowsing rod into her left boot. “Thank you, but I know a shortcut.” She grinned sidelong at Gabriel. He’d donned his long dark coat and was placing a map in an inside pocket, but he seemed to sense her attention; he looked up with cool, dispassionate professionalism. And yet, his eye held something that Elodie would describe as an anti-glint: excitement so sober, so dignified, it was the blackest black, more intense than any sparkle. She quirked her grin.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” he said.
They turned to face northwest. The cobalt flames of the burning monolith illuminated them with a witchical glow. The breeze stirred their hair. In unison, each hooked iron and gold around their left ear. Altogether they presented a heroic picture, lacking only the dramatic billowing of capes for a full effect.
“Botheration,” Elodie whispered, tipping her head a little toward Gabriel so he might hear her. “If we don’t survive, someone’s going to find my pile of underwear at the inn.”
He laughed.
Laughed .
Or perhaps it was just the wind, for in the next half a second his face was stony once more. The opposite might be said for Elodie’s heart, however, which began to flutter more wildly than a summer storm.
“Be careful!” Algernon called out weakly from where he was propping himself up, white-faced, on the ground.
Elodie gave him a radiant smile. Disaster burned behind her, disaster raged ahead, but all she knew was delight. Gabriel had laughed (possibly) (probably not) (but she was going to pretend it really had happened). “Don’t worry about us,” she told Algernon gaily. “This is our job. We’ll be perfectly safe.”
“You’d better be!” the young accountant answered. “It will cost a bloody fortune to transport your bodies back to Oxford!”
“Let’s go,” Gabriel said. Then, without further word, he broke into a run.
“See you later!” Elodie said, waving to the others. And while they stared open-mouthed, she sprinted away from them, following Gabriel right off the edge of the hill into a silver-veined sky.