Damnation. The echo of our past was too much for me to bear. I turned and struck out blindly across the uneven ground, only hoping that my feet were still carrying me north. “You can tell our hostess that you’ve confirmed my safety,” I called back to him. “So you’ve done your duty as a guest.”
“Ah, but we haven’t found Miss Fennell yet, have we?” Wrexham fell smoothly into step beside me, his greatcoat swishing about his long legs. “Lady Cosgrave wishes all the magicians of our party to join the search.”
“Then—” No. I snapped my teeth shut just in time, before I could give in to temptation and order him to search elsewhere.
My ex-fiancé might be infuriating, but he was no fool. I couldn’t afford to drop such obvious clues…and if I truly hadn’t any feelings left for him anymore, as I’d claimed so vehemently two months ago, then I shouldn’t mind where he chose to conduct his search. No, I should be perfectly cool and collected in his company.
I said, with poisonous sweetness, “Shall we talk about the weather?”
“If you like.” He glanced up at the snow-clouded sky, walking as easily up the steep slope of the hill as if we were taking a morning stroll about a garden. “It wasn’t meant to snow for at least another three days. Don’t you find this storm a bit peculiar?”
I rolled my eyes. “As if weather wizardry were ever reliable.” It was one of the first things we’d been taught after my arrival at the Library, as our tutors fought valiantly to clear our minds of superstition and instill a more Enlightened approach to magic.
“It could be, though. If they forgot about trying to mimic the ancient druids and took a more modern approach—or if someone would finally devote the time and effort to persuading any of the non-human beings to share their own strategies…hmm.” Wrexham broke off, his voice sharpening. “Where are we, exactly?”
“You don’t know?” I slanted a glance up at him through the falling snow. “You just traveled directly here, remember?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t aiming for any particular geographical point.” His words sounded abstracted as he peered into the distance, frowning. “I was aiming for you, of course.”
But there was no of course about the matter. That particular spell took an enormous amount of power and effort...and, far more unsettlingly, a bone-deep familiarity with its target.
I kept my tone light even as my fingers tightened around my lantern and compass. “It’s a pity no one in our party knows Miss Fennell well enough to do the same. But—ahh!” I gasped as the ground suddenly lurched beneath our feet, sending me stumbling forward. “What was that?”
Beneath us, the ground had re-settled...but in the distance, a boulder shifted up and down.
Boulders didn’t move on their own.
Wrexham and I both turned with the swift, unspoken instinct of long practice until our backs nearly touched and we could survey the entire landscape together.
Snow flurried past my bubble of protection. A rock rolled slowly past my feet, tumbling downhill.
Wrexham said, his voice deceptively casual, “Neither of us knows this territory. So how did you happen to choose your path?”
I grimaced, glad that he couldn’t see my face as I made my confession. “Without any finesse whatsoever, I’m afraid. All I have is a plain magnetic compass, so I’ve followed it.”
And I had, even as my wayward memories had wandered elsewhere. My booted feet had walked north across snow-covered fields and even up this rugged hillside, following the compass’s magnetic lead…
…But the rest of me hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to where I was going.
This was the problem with memories—and with useless, distracting emotions in general. This was why I should have known better than to come to this house party in the first place! I might already have lost my magical abilities, but there was no excuse for giving up my mental capacities as well.
My gaze swept across the barren, rocky hillside that we stood on, identical to every other hill ranging in the distance…until it moved.
Again.
The ground shivered beneath my feet.
Another rock rolled past us.
I took a deep breath and gripped the lantern’s handle to hold it steady as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. “It seems,” I said to my ex-fiancé in as calm a tone as I could muster, “you may have a chance to discuss non-human methods of weather prediction after all...because I’m reasonably certain that we are standing on a troll.”
3
Giant boulders flexed at the edges of what I’d taken to be the hillside as the crouching troll rolled out its massive, grass-covered shoulders, sending the ground shivering and rolling beneath my feet.
It was clearly preparing itself to stand…at which point we would be tossed willy-nilly off its back.
Frustration rose like acid through my throat as I planted my boots more firmly on the swaying, rocky slope and sought for any viable alternatives. Amy would never forgive me if my carelessness got me killed today after all the work she’d put into keeping me alive and sane over the last four months.
I’d been jesting, of course, about the prospect of conversation with the creature. I had never heard of a troll speaking to a human—not even when scooping up untaxed carriages from the road. They communicated with their elven masters, one presumed, but with no one else as far as I knew. The humans who shared these dales with them simply relied on the rules of our ancient treaty for their good behavior…and on magicians if ever that went wrong.
Of all the times not to be able to cast any spells…
“We’re too high up to reach the ground in time.” I spoke through my teeth.
“It must have been asleep till now—for years, even, to settle so firmly into the ground.” Behind me, Wrexham’s voice sounded more speculative than worried. “Who knows how long it’s been resting here?”
“Until we woke it.” I drew a deep breath, trying to force myself into the same analytical mode, as if this were only one of the more challenging magical puzzles that we’d been set at the Library. “It’s so much larger than the ones that guard the toll roads.”
“Perhaps it’s older than they are, too. Or…” Wrexham broke off as the ground shifted again beneath our feet. This time, even more unsettlingly, it began to rise through the air, lifting us higher and higher above the ground as the troll’s massive, bent legs slowly began to straighten beneath us. I staggered, and Wrexham’s voice sharpened as he dropped down to a wary crouch. “Take my hand, Harwood. It’s time for us to leave.”
“No.” I glowered through the falling snow as I fell to my knees and grabbed hold of a nearby rocky outcropping for balance. I clung onto it, breathing hard, as the ground slanted beneath me. “You cast a travel spell for yourself scarcely ten minutes ago. You can’t carry a passenger with you on a second journey now. Not this soon. You’d risk injuring yourself forever.” As I had.