56

Again I was struck by the absence of birdsong, and what we'd come to think of as 'normal' background noise, frogs, crickets, bugs. All were missing from the noise, and you'd think we were in church, although I think mausoleum would be like this. Dead and dusty grey. The grass was green, as were the pine, but the color was brittle in appearance, like paint that had been weathered too long. I was more than a little spooked by it all, and I think the others were nervous also.
“So, we're here, now all we have to do is get back, and this service of yours is done Fern” said Kevin, looking over at Cobb, who himself was picking up a handful of dirt and letting it sift through his other hand. It looked like normal dirt, but had that brittle texture to it as well. It bothered me to see that stuff disturbed for some reason. I shook of the feeling as best I could and looked around. We were at the base of a low hill that rose going inland.
Cobb was sifting more energetically now through the dusty earth, as if he was searching for something, and as we approached to get him to start back with us, he pulled a lump of metal from the earth. He looked at it for a moment and then looked to the three of us. “Are any of you psychometric, or able to build a spell of psychometry? I am unable to do such things with fae magic.
“If we can, do we have tro stay here to do it?” Kent asked him in a very quiet, and direct tone to his voice. I agreed with him. I didn't want to stay on this ground any more than I had to, there was something very inimical to us, and it was raising the hairs on my neck. “Let's take it with us” I said to the others, “we can do the psychomecrap when we get back to the car. This place is beginning to creep me out big-time.” Kent was already stepping back towards the bridge, when Cobb said suddenly,”wait.”
“Wait?” argued Kevin. “Why wait, I agree with Fern, this place is got a bad vibe to it, I don't like it, it's creeping Fern out, to quote her, and you want to wait? What the hell for?” “Because” said Cobb with a weird, intense tremor to his voice. “Psychometry is done best where an object is collected from. Those impressions or echoes are strongest and easiest to read at the location where you find an object. We go back, and we lose the detail that might be important.”
Kent had stopped by the road that linked to the bridge. “What are you waiting for, we were here, now we go back. Get a move on you youngsters.” He sounded impatient, and I was getting that way too. Cobb was suddenly wanting to do a past life spell on a piece of metal? I got that manipulated feeling again. Cobb had played, or was playing us right now, and I had had enough. I stalked over to him and said, very politely “May I see what you have there?” He looked at me curiously for a moment,then handed the lump to me, and I turned and threw it as far as I could into the thickest dead bunch of brittle looking brush I could see.
Cobb looked at me, his jaw muscles twitching as he kept from yelling. He turned and took a deep breath, then a second one. He then said to no one in particular. “I suppose it si good that there is one less piece here, there are so many in the ground here they would be a hazard if more were exposed like that piece.” With that, I looked hard around the area, expecting to see little things here and there that were poking through the soil, that we missed when we looked the area over earlier. Nothing of the sort could be seen. Cobb kneeled down and dug about a finger's length into the dry soil and pulled up a lump of something, which looked crisped and charred.
Kent and Kevin walked over to Cobb to take a quick look. “What do you think this is gentlemen?” Cobb asked them as I fumed a short distance away. I was about ready to head back on my own and to blazes with them here. This place was just plain creepy, and Cobb pulling those pieces out of the ground didn't do anything to settle my nerves down. “Looks like a piece of safety glass, here, see this, you can see the layer of plastic between the two glass layers.” I walked over to the three of them and slapped the thing out of Cobb's hands. “Can. We. Go. Now?” I said through gritted teeth.

55

“Well, it's going to be a twelve kilo walk, which is about three hours there and three hours back. I'd like to get back before it gets dark” I said. “I'd love to use the car” Kent said wistfully, “but that much moving metal is too easy to spot, and Cobb's glamour might not be able to take its touch.” Damn, I hadn't thought of that. It meant before we could go across, we had to shuck any cold iron we had or the glamour might go poof. I really didn't want to try the bridge in the open. “Okay, let's shuck metal and get this done.” I said irritably. About the only thing I'd have for protection would be my feet and a few quick-and-dirty weak spells to blind or confuse aim, and I don't think they'd affect a dragon.
Cobb said, “Can you wait a moment?” He went over to his pack that he had lugged around since we got here and pulled a longbow and a quiver of silver arrows out, and laid them on the ground. A sword and two daggers were also produced from the sack, and a small silver shield the size of a dinner plate. “It si not much, but each of you may use what is here, I will carry the shield and sword. My accuracy with this,” and he motioned to the bow, “is at best poor, so if any of you can draw the bow, please carry it.”
“But won't this amount of metal be just as bad as the car?” Kent asked. “No, as was said before, the silver will not disrupt the glamour on the bridge, and we shall be able to cross without endangering any of the spells” Cobb replied evenly. “Well, then, can we get going please? I really don't like the idea of crossing this thing at night.” said Kevin irritably. We gathered up the equipment, Cobb taking the sword and the shield, I took a dagger, and felt ridiculously like I was in a fantasy movie doing it. Kent grabbed the other dagger, leaving Kevin the bow, which he picked up reluctantly. So equipped, our 'party' ventured out onto the bridge and towards the barrier.
The trip to the barrier was very uneventful, just listening to the waves roll underneath us as we traversed the bridge. The eerie quiet did nothing to relax any of us and when we reached the edge of the barrier, we all stopped just short and listened, trying to hear any sound from the other side of the opening. Nothing, except for the rolling of the waves, was heard by anyone. “Want to do the honors Fern?” said Kent. I took a deep breath, and Cobb stepped in front of me. Then Kent stepped past the barrier, while we all looked at him. He grinned back and said “I'm too old to run away fast. This way I get my choice of how I go first.” Morbid, definitely a morbid sense of humor there. We crossed the barrier, and nothing really changed except our knowledge we were on the opposite side of a barrier that no one had penetrated for sixty-odd years, and some of the early best had tried.
It made me wonder, really wonder, why we were able to do so when so many others who were probably as good or better, did not. I put it down to looking at the obvious and not trying to go head-on which a lot of wizards seem want to do. You may win big a flashy going head-to-head with a spell, summoning, or another magickar, but you also tend to lose very big when you do fail. Quite often it is the permanent, fatal kind of lose.
So maybe we were the first to apply sneaky or a sideways thought to the problem, but I doubt that too. There was an answer why, and it bugged me that I couldn't quite figure it out. We stopped about a hundred yards past the barrier and looked down. The waves here still rolled with the wind, and the noise sounded the same, but everything here felt more sterile, less life and more decay. The wind itself hadn't changed, but it felt greasy as it slid over my clothes and ruffled my hair. There was a general unwholesomeness that permeated everything around us.
We hurried our pace slightly and got to the shore of Prince Edward Island, and again we stopped to look around and record in our minds the place all our efforts had now led to. In a very real and eerie sense, this reminded me of Ahiah's vale, where my parents and uncle had died, and where we'd managed to break that glass bottle that Ahiah had made and used to such horror on people. Everything had the same feel. Grey, dusty, lifeless things that had been sucked dry of their essence by some unclean thing.

54

I awoke to feeling a pressure working its way around my hand. When I could get my eyes to focus, I could see Kent wrapping my left hand in gauze. The right had been wrapped to the elbow and I could fuzzily make out the same on the hand Kent was wrapping. “Hey, welcome back to the Great White North kiddo.” Kevin said cheerily. “Next time you want to do something like that, please let us kick your butt around the block first? I do not like thinking about what Fawn would do to us if you were to die on us.”
He looked over at Kent, who was putting the first bit of tape on to hold the bandage in place. “What part of cop siberia would she put us in you think?” Kent looked at Kevin and gave a slight smile. “Parking meters.” He said. “That or cleaning the K-9 kennels.” Kevin thought about the choices and theatrically shuddered, and said “Oh my god I forgot about the kennels, a fate worse than eternal traffic tickets.” I managed a woozy pained smile. “Gee your thought to my safety has me so underwhelmed, I just don't know what to s... ow!” I yelped as Kent stabbed me with a dull needle and gave me a shot of Darvon to ease the pain.
The world went pleasantly fuzzy for the next few hours as we went back to the local clinic, and the doctor on duty was the same one that worked on Kevin the night before. He saw us, I'm sure, and I wish I could have made out what he said, as I heard both Kent and Kevin laugh, but I was too muzzy from the Darvon to do anything but nod and smile along. Better living through chemistry.
Kent said I was five hours in the emergency surgery and magickal healing due to the massive nerve damage to my hands from Cobb stabbing me and the backlash from the ley line. But I woke back at the Northumberland Inn, laying on a bed with Kent and Kevin playing whist at the small table in the room. “Hey Kent, look, it lives.” Kevin said with a smile on his face and in his voice. They had spent all their time here making sure I was all right. “How are you feeling now?” Kent asked me as I slowly tried to sit up. “Lousy,” I told him and my head throbbed. “No talky, or I get mean,” I whispered to them.
They looked over at me and both stood up, and gave me a thumbs up, and left the room quietly. They knew how to make an exit, and I passed blissfully out and slept until eight the next morning. I awoke to the door rattling as Kevin knocked energetically on it. “Fern, wake up, time to get food and head out!” he said loudly through the door. “All right, I hear you! Stop the noise and I'll be right out after a shower!” “Okay, Kent and I'll head out then, what should we bring you back?” “Sausage and toast, and some coffee,” I shouted through the door. “Got it, see you when we get back.”
I unwrapped my arms and saw the loose skin peeling off. The skin had been regrown overnight by the doctor, and now the blistered and burned skin was being sloughed off. I scrubbed vigorously in the shower and got most of it to loosen and drop away. I'd finished and just gotten dressed when Kevin was pounding on the door again. “Here's breakfast.” He said. I opened the door and took the food over to the postage stamp sized table and tucked in while Kent and Kevin grabbed my pack and gear and put them in the trunk.
Kent drove us back out to the site, and as before, Cobb was on site waiting for us to show. He stalked over to the car as we started to get out. “You three, I have words for you!” he said loudly as he approached the car. I stood my ground, and saw Kent and Kevin ease to the sides and unobtrusively ready themselves for trouble. Cobb sounded agitated and I really didn't want to fight with him. I looked him in the eye as he approached and he slowed to a stop about ten feet from us.
“Good morning to you to Cobb, now what's the problem?” I said acerbically. “The bridge up in the wrong place?” He watched us for a moment and relaxed slightly. “No, I finished the concealment after you three left for Pictou, and stayed on watch here through the night to see if Anolyn would show. He has not, and that worries me.” He looked at the three of us again, and then said in a faltering voice loaded with emotion. “I....also wanted...to thank you for your work in this. In truth I had not....expected that Fern could have done this. So I apologize for my ill manners and the trials I have put you through to date.”
“Well, a late apology is better than none,” Kent said, “but we're not done yet I do believe. I seem to remember that we must cross to the island and re-cross back to here to finish the service?” Cobb quirked a smile. “Yes, that is part of the terms of the service. But I do recommend caution. I would have preferred Anolyn to show rather than not. At least them we would know that he had sensed and decided to investigate. His not showing makes me think that a trap is being set.” Cobb sounded strained from being up and alert all night, but I kind of felt that way too. i think most of us prefer to see and know the enemy, rather than not see him and scare ourselves half-witless with possibilities.

53

I was in a hurry relative to the others though, so I took a few shortcuts and pulled the power from a different source. It was easier to do once Kent and Kevin finished the building of their spells and just let me maintain them. I focused and mentally viewed myself reaching deep into the ground and putting my hands in the ley line that ran through this area, and pulled a thread from the line to me. This shortcut could kill if not carefully handled. The thread from the line would continually feed me magick, allowing me to build up a store rapidly for use. The downside was it would keep feeding into me whether I wanted it to or not, and if I didn't cut the link after a certain point, the link would grow too strong to cut and feed so much into me that I'd burn up like paper in a flame from trying to hold too much magick.
I kept the chant up to bleed some magick off and to prime the echo for the power I was going to feed into it. The magick kept increasing its flow and the power started to raise the hairs on my arms and neck, and it skittered along my arm like a live electric current. I looked out at the echo of the bridge and started feeding the power into it. The slight yellowish vapor that made the echo began to solidify, turning an opaque grey-white as the power rebuilt the bridge bit by bit, and soon the first section extended beyond where I sat out into the strait. The filling-in and solidifying accelerated and continued as I poured more power into the echo, and in minutes, the bridge solidified up to the barrier.
The bridge continued to settle and become more solid as the power kept pouring in, and I could feel the link thicken and strengthen as I pulled from the line. I wanted to finish soon as I was now bleeding a slight amount of power into me from the spell, and that signaled I was at the limit of my ability to channel the power. From now on I'd be absorbing more power as the link strengthened. The bridge built quickly past the barrier, but it was another ten minutes before I could feel the end step back to land from the sea. I'd finished the echo, now I had to finish the opening.
The power was becoming more than a trickle, and I started to push my will around the link to choke it off, and I began to feel the first stirrings of panic as it resisted me closing it off. I was at a point where there were two choices to be had. One, I could forget about keeping the barrier open and focus on choking the link. If I did that the barrier would close on the echo and destroy it, and we'd be back to square one, but Anolyn would know what we were up to. Two, I could use the power to finish the locking the opening, and then fight the link. If Kevin and Kent were still in the spell with me, they would be able to sense the problem and maybe help a small extent, but in truth it would be me against the link, and every moment pushed the odds closer to me burning to a crisp.
Call it stubbornness, I went with plane two. The power surged into the opening Kevin had crafted and reinforced the opening. I felt Kevin break his link and leave the spell to me, and I felt the whole barrier try to snap down on my opening. I aimed the wild torrent of power into the barrier and it solidified and held, now I could work on saving me. I cut the power and the two spells remained rock-steady, ready to use. I tried to choke off the power, and could barely slow the flow down. I could feel the electric itching increase to painful levels and I tried to scream, but the power held me rigid, like being electrocuted.
Cobb stepped in front of me and was murmuring something. He pulled his sword and looked at me, then raised it to strike. There was no way I could dodge, or even use some of this massive power to protect myself, I'd gotten caught in the current and was being pulled apart from the inside out. My hands felt molten as the ley line swallowed them and built larger and began filling me up in earnest. Cobb was shouting now and I felt dim vibrations through the ground. He looked up and back at me, stepped to the side and lowered himself to one knee, then thrust right through my hands.
The cold pain of the silver blade cutting through my hands was minor to the blast of power that the line burst with when Cobb cut it with the sword. My hands and arms blistered from the heated backlash and my whole body was shocked violently rigid as the power blew out from me. I don't remember passing out.