1.38. A Bonus

Lisa al Ydris crouched by the stonecut circle, daubing at the day-old blood with a washcloth. “Cabota Cazza. Hmmm.”

It wasn’t much to go on, but the other al Ydrises had returned similarly low on leads. Tiago had reported the dead men’s families were either distraught, uncooperative, or both, and requested permission to arrest a few; Lisa had refused. Ofelia had sought knowledge on the sorcerer and learned he’d spent his days as an unremarkable farmhand.

“Cabota Cazza,” Seth echoed, as he stripped the blade of a dry leaf away from its spindly veins. “Is it ringing any bells?”

“Not really. Sounds Sektoric, sure enough. This circle’s still our main lead, I think, but we’ll keep the name on our tongues.” Lisa tossed her hair over her shoulder to keep the evening wind from blowing it into her face. “I imagine that’s our last evening in Sondam for a while. We have what we need from the place, now, and I’m so looking forward to Fontana again. The showers, et cetera.”

“The nice beds,” Seth said, and slapped himself on the wrist—go easy. But it was hard to be anything but pleased with the knowing grin Lisa gave in reply. “Have you figured out what this circle is?”

“This, my dear thief, is a communing circle. A hole punched in reality and folded on itself and its fellows. This middle ring here?” She poked the toe of her boot onto it. “You can send messages and small items through it. And these outer rings and runes are its directions, and the coordinate pointers to its interlinked circles.”

“So there’s more of them.”

“Correct. A circle grows in the complexity and the initial amount of hexis required to set it up for every additional circle it attunes to. If it’s a one-to-one connection, it’s a devil to work out, but it’s possible. If it’s three or more, it becomes quite maddening.”

“Is this a one-to-one?”

Lisa laced her hands over her knees and stood to her full, towering height. “This one has six.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s… a problem, then. Right?”

“It takes power to set this sort of thing up,” Lisa murmured, halfway to herself. “And knowledge. Esoteric and deeply concerning knowledge. Beyond anything a rural fireball-flinger could do.” She refocused on him and readopted her breezy mien. “Not to worry, Seth. This isn’t really the sort of thing we take on directly. It’s something we must investigate, understand, and report to the Necropolis, for whatever sized guns they care to bring in. What you said the other night—about how linked all this must be. I really do think you’re right.”

“So what’ll we do about it?”

Lisa tsked. “What, indeed. What does one do with a magic rock?”

She pulled a dark shape from her pocket.

“This, Mr. il Gutierre, is another, smaller magic rock.” She flicked it into the air and caught it again. “And a wonderful idea you gave me.”

“I did?”

“Mmhmm.” She gestured to the center ring. “A quantity of debris sweeps through this portal whenever it’s open. Leaves, twigs. Pebbles. Here in the center is where the material folds itself through the membrane of the world, out into the phlogiston where dwell the disembodied seraphs and the turning wheel itself, and then back to the kindred realms.”

“Seems dangerous.”

“Indeed it is,” Lisa said. “I suspected we were dealing with a circle of this nature when those scarecrows animated. A possessor seraph has precious few inroads to the kindred realms. A wormy little hole like this is one of them. Going unlit here would be the ideal spot to provide embodiment to a hostile spirit.”

“So they did it on purpose.”

“Quite possibly. I’d say probably, even.”

“As a trap?”

“That is a straightforward answer. I like straightforward. If that was the intent it was foiled, thanks to you and that lovely little Fox of yours. Which brings me back to that idea I mentioned.” She turned the rock over in her hand. “I thought about asking you to do this, but it’d be days of holding the hex. You’d lose out on your Fox’s voice, and you’d have that invocation-tickle in your head, and if it went on too long you might get hexis bite. And I want your mind sharp and your lovely skin unmarred. So…”

She raised the rock to show him. On its flat side sat a carving of the Fox.

“While you and the children were asking around, I paid a visit to that scriber of yours. She was upset, but I threw more work her way. This is a scribe-stone.” She held it forward. “You want to see?”

Seth took the rock. It was still warm from Lisa’s touch. “I thought magic needed to be on living flesh to work.”

“It almost always does, yes,” Lisa said. “But there are ways. There are principles and techniques few are able to use. My donor was one of the few.”

“What’s so hard about it?”

“It’s not quite hard so much as it’s illegal.” She pulled a broad knife from her baldrick. “I cut her head off over it, which makes me quite the hypocrite, I suppose. But Charlie uses it, too, to keep the deathspell up. So we’re both hypocrites.”

Seth gingerly returned the stone. “Blood magic.”

“Mmhmm.” She laid her executioner sword across the circle. “Fortunately, I have a ready supply of human hexis right here. And this application will barely dim a bead. All I need’s a bit of that, and a bit of this…”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

She sliced the pad of her thumb open and smeared it across the Fox on the stone. Seth winced.

Lisa dipped her thumb to the stone and drew a connecting line between two runes in her blood. “And then we open the circle, and point it to its Fontana brother…”

The wind picked up. A pressure muffled into Seth’s ears. His neck hairs stood on end.

“Aaaand…” Lisa underhand tossed the fox stone into the center of the circle. It blinked out of existence. “Finished.”

The tightness in Seth’s head loosened itself. “So that rock’s ended up at wherever the Fontana circle is?”

“That’s right. And when I invoke it, I can hear through its little foxy ears.” Lisa stuck her bloody thumb in her ear. “Nothing yet. But I’ll check regularly, and once we revisit Fontana, I have some designs on how exactly we can triangulate our stone by sound. With luck, the circle’s caretakers will let the thing lie or sweep it to the side with the rest of the forest flotsam that blows in.”