I ran my eyes over the comatose gargoyles. “No. We have to keep going.” I stiffened my rubbery knees and pushed back into motion.
No one spoke again, as if being silent could keep us safe. The farther we climbed, the more bizarre and twisted the landscape became until the forest bore no resemblance to the hill across the canyon. Barren patches of scorched earth butted up to sections of woodland so overgrown the trunks of the oaks were bloated and cracked and the underbrush was impenetrable to anything larger than a mouse. Rows of pine trees lying as flat as plowed oat stalks and numerous rockslides only added to the difficulty of traversing the increasingly indiscernible road. Above us, clouds formed, rained, and dissipated in minutes instead of hours or days, often interspersed with lightning and fire. Through it all, the grumbling, cracking, grating sounds of shifting rocks and thunder never let up. I walked on nerves strung so tight I quivered inside my own skin, and when Marcus called a halt, I bounced on my toes.
He raised his crossbow, eyes on the sky and the wild snarl of energy ghosting closer. I jerked around, looking for cover, but we were caught in the middle of a meadow. The safety the trees might have provided was illusory, but being in the open felt foolishly vulnerable.
“What do we do?”
“Nothing. Just be quiet.”
Comforting.
The storm was composed of fire wrapped in swirls of air and wood. In other words, it was a perfect firestorm in the making. Flames licked from the raw elemental tangle as if testing the air with a dozen blistering tongues as it swept above the tree line. The pine boughs swayed in its wake, the rustle of needles lost beneath the crackle of the uncontrolled elements.
Holding my breath, I cowered next to the air sled, useless. I couldn’t pull magic to protect us without attracting the storm. I didn’t have a single nonmagical weapon. I was supposed to be a gargoyle guardian, but I had no way to defend the helpless dormant gargoyles.
“Nobody move,” Marcus said, his voice soft. “We might get lucky.”
The magic storm slid past us on the outer rim of the meadow. At its current trajectory, it would pass us by without—
The storm kinked on itself, changing course and spearing directly toward us.
“Damn it!” Marcus shot a null trap into the wild energy. It should have neutralized all active magic in the vicinity, but the magic storm swallowed the trap with an infinitesimal hiccup. “Mika, to me!”
I lurched to his side, tripping over my own feet in my rush. Marcus had planted himself between the cart and the storm, and he shoved the anchoring rod into the ground in front of us.
“Link with me,” he ordered.
The storm had us in its indifferent sights; hiding our magic had become moot. “With gargoyle help?”
“No gargoyles.”
I drew as much as I could hold of water and air, my two weakest elements, then added a balanced amount of earth, fire, and wood and shoved the bundle to Marcus. If I hadn’t been so scared, I might have been self-conscious about the pathetic level of magic I offered him.
The link between us snapped into place and Marcus’s magic roared through me, so much more powerful than my own. The rush of power tipped my internal awareness into the link, pulling me into the slurry of elements. If I allowed it, the link would consume me, and I’d be as helpless as a dormant gargoyle, just a vessel to pull magic through.
“Relax. You’ve got this,” Marcus said.
I teetered on the precipice of control, then fell back into my body. Magic still flowed between us, but I could separate my core self from the magic.
I opened eyes I hadn’t realized I’d closed. Marcus leaned close enough to fill my vision.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Not a moment too soon. Marcus threw our combined might into a huge shield of water and earth, wrapping it around the sled, the dormant gargoyles, Oliver, and Celeste and tethering it to the elemental anchor he’d pounded into the ground. The magic storm slammed the shield a second later. The impact would have thrown me from my feet, but Marcus grabbed my arm without even looking at me, holding me up.
Water countered fire; earth countered air. The wild magic folded back on itself before twisting for a second attack. Fire and air pounded the shield and burst, unraveling with a thunderous boom. The remaining snarl of wood flared across the shield, feeding from the water, devouring the earth. Fast as thought, Marcus wrapped the wood magic in fire and squeezed. The elements canceled each other out with a clap I barely registered over the ringing in my ears.
Marcus released the link, and I sagged to the ground, drained. He stalked across the quiet meadow and picked up the null trap with a pinch of air. The brass basket was blackened, the previously round shape melted and disfigured. Shaking his head, Marcus tossed the deformed mess into the back of the air sled.
Oliver loped under the sled to my side, rubbing against my forearm with a whine.
“I’m okay. Just catching my breath,” I assured him. That hadn’t even been a big storm. I tilted my head to peer up the mountain. “Are we close, Celeste?”
“No.”
My heart sank.
“That’s not going to work many more times,” Marcus said, yanking the anchor from the ground and shaking the dirt from it before sliding it back into its loop at his waist.
“We can help,” Oliver said, including Celeste in the offer.
“It might be dangerous if the magic backlashes to you,” Marcus said before I could.
“No more dangerous than if you burn out before we reach the baetyl,” Celeste said. “Rourke is getting weaker. We need to keep moving.” She leaned her chest into the rope and dug her back paws into the soil. Marcus pushed the sled until she got it in motion again. I braced my hands on the dirt and shoved to my feet. Another ten minutes’ rest would have been preferable. Marcus picked up his crossbow and notched another null trap—whatever good it would do us.