I rubbed my gloved hands over my arms to chase off the tingle the spel had left behind. Well, now I know how a flare gun feels. I looked around, expecting Death to just miraculously appear. He didn’t.
Okay, then. I glanced back at the ritual. Magic continued to build in the circle as the dancers twisted and jumped. I shivered, remembering the pain I’d felt in the last ritual site.
“We’ve got to disrupt that spel .” The amount of energy in the circle had grown thick enough to stain the air like multicolored fog. I blinked. That can’t be. Clutching PC, I peeked out from our cover. Falin grabbed my shoulder as if peeked out from our cover. Falin grabbed my shoulder as if he was afraid I’d rush into the clearing, and I pressed myself against the tree. “Is it just me, or are the tops of their heads vanishing?”
Everyone peeked out to see. Hol y threw a hand over her mouth and made a smal strangled noise, but she didn’t scream. Falin only nodded, his face grim.
Goose bumps prickled over my skin, my dread reaching the saturation point and trying to pour out of my skin. Death had said souls were the fuel of life, and I’d thought he was hinting only at the souls powering the constructs. But this ritual . . . I stared at the slowly dissolving bodies. This ritual was being fueled by the dancers—by their movement and by their very essence, body and soul. Those feet . . . Al those feet. Al lefts, and none with tool marks. And when I raised the shade, the foot had forgotten it had a body, and it had danced. It was the dance. They would dance until there wasn’t enough left of them to complete the next dance step. Until they were only a single foot. We have to stop this.
I turned to Falin. “I suppose suggesting that you shoot the piper would be too easy a solution to actual y work?”
“We were in Faerie,” he said with a grimace. Which means no gun. “The only weapons I have on me are the daggers, but they’re enchanted and would never make it through the circle.”
Damn.
“So we have to break that circle.” But how?
“I have an idea.” Hol y said. “Can I borrow a knife?”
I nodded and squatted as I struggled with the skirt of my gown. Curses burned my tongue as I wrestled with the material blocking my boots, but I bit them back. Once I drew the dagger, I passed it to Hol y and she handed me PC.
The smal dog’s ears quivered, but he looked up at me with eyes that trusted I’d get him home safe. I wished I had the same confidence.
Hol y used the dagger to scrape a sheet of bark from the Hol y used the dagger to scrape a sheet of bark from the tree and I felt her tap into her stored magic as she used the blade to carve smal runes into the bark. Her magic surged, settling into the makeshift charm, and she let out a breath that sounded like she’d been holding it a long time. Jabbing the blade of the dagger into the dirt by her feet, she lifted the bark, examining the carvings. Then she passed it to me.
“Disruption charm.”
I accepted the charm, feeling it tingle over my fingers.
Damn, she was good. I couldn’t have crafted this charm on a good day, and she’d done it without a ritual or a circle and with only the magic she had stored on her person.
With a disruption charm, al we would have to do was touch it to the circle and the charm should bring the entire barrier down. But first we’d have to get the charm past the dragons guarding the ritual.
“Think you could hit that circle from here?” I asked, passing the charm to Falin.
Falin balanced the bark-turned-charm in his hand, bouncing it to check the weight. Then he shook his head.
“It’s too light. I’d never be able to throw it that far.”
Which meant that one of us had to carry it to the circle.
But how do we get past the dragons? I chewed at my bottom lip. One dragon we might be able to take. It would be a hel of a chal enge, but probably not impossible. But three? I shook my head. We needed help.
Where are those collectors? I poked at the spel again, just to make sure I’d real y activated it the first time. No rush of magic this time, so I trusted that the first wave I’d felt worked.
“I have another idea,” Hol y said, but her eyes didn’t meet mine when I turned. “We can cause a disturbance, draw the dragons away, and someone smal , someone who wouldn’t be noticed, can affix the disruption charm to the side of the circle.”
“Someone smal ?” That definitely knocked Falin out of the running, and I was far from short. Hol y was petite, but I the running, and I was far from short. Hol y was petite, but I didn’t think she meant herself. Her eyes darted to where PC sat in my lap. “No. No, no, definitely not. Hol y, he’s a dog.”
“He’s tiny, and the dragons are huge. They probably won’t even be able to see him.”