The meadow, when they reached it, looked much as they had left it, although she thought the area of dead grasses had grown. The presence that had been there was faded; no corner-of-her-eye shadow or sense of menace lingered underfoot.
But she did not believe it was gone. And other than the owl—that had disappeared, she noted, checking the sky overhead?—there was still no sign of life anywhere in the valley. Even the constant annoyance of flies gathered around the horses’ eyes and haunches was obvious by their absence.
She slid down from Uvnee’s saddle and pulled the satchel with her. The salt stick had been worn down to nearly a nub, fitting easily in her palm now. She reached past it, past the leather-bound journal, to the bottom of the pack, where one other item rested.
The etched stone that she’d discovered earlier, still wrapped up in the torn stocking. The feeling she’d had, that it had been left there by Farron for some reason of his own, still lingered.
She could not say why she took it out now, why she had not left it along the trail, thrown it into a creek and let running water have it. Gifts from magicians were to be avoided as much as magicians themselves. But he might have known she would need it, somehow. Or it might have been utterly random and useless, a foolish prank from a madman.
Gabriel might have told her to lose it. So, she had not told him.
“How many magicians are there, wandering the Territory, do you think? As many as buffalo?”
“Buffalo don’t feed on each other,” Gabriel said, sliding down out of Steady’s saddle, his gaze still sweeping around them, looking for something, then returning to her. “And magicians seem to breed slower. Far fewer than even a single herd would be my guess. Fewer than all the settlers from Clear Rock to Poll’s Station.”
She had no idea where Poll’s Station was or how many lived between those two spots.
“What is that?” He’d seen the stone in her hand. She turned, opening her palm to show it to him but keeping far back enough that he would not think to take it from her. She felt a stirring possessiveness toward it, or perhaps a wariness: if it was a magician’s making, it was likely dangerous and certainly unpredictable.
“What is it?” he asked again.
She closed her fingers around the heft of the stone again, almost expecting the sigil in her palm to react to it somehow, but nothing happened. Making a decision, she shoved the stocking back into the bag and kept the stone with her.
If it was Farron’s making, maybe it would be useful.
“Isobel.” Gabriel’s voice was stern but curious. “What are you up to?”
“I need to release the angered spirit, and clear the magicians’ medicine from where it is trapped.”
“You couldn’t before.”
“You can’t kill a magician,” she said, agreeing with him. “That was the problem. And, maybe, the answer.”
He took off his hat, running a hand through his hair, then down along the side of his cheek, all signs he was nearing exasperation.
“Isobel.”
“You can’t kill a magician,” she said again, feeling her way through it. “And they . . . they brought the ancient one back. Why and how?”
“Blood medicine,” he said. “Buffalo are powerful.”
“Blood?—and hide to wrap it in. Territory medicine. The buffalo’s medicine and the medicine of this place, sacred ground, all strong. Too strong. And magicians refuse to die down.
“It’s not a haint, Gabriel.” She felt some of her worry, her fear, crack through her voice, and tamped it down again. “That’s why I couldn’t set it to rest. The Territory trapped it half-alive, and now it can’t let go. It doesn’t know how.”
“If you break it free?—the magicians will be able to re-form somewhere else?”
Isobel shrugged; they had seen Farron do something similar, but she did not know enough to say what would be done. The magicians she had dealt with . . .
She remembered little of it, as though something threw a drape over her memories. But she did not need to know how; if she was in truth the devil’s silver, meant to cleanse what had been fouled, then like silver, she did nothing of her own willing but rather what she was.
And if she were something else . . .
“Iz?” He’d seen something change in her face. “What is it?”
“What am I?”
He’d not been conscious of it, but the moment the words came out of her mouth, Gabriel knew that he’d been waiting for that question.