Across the Great Barrier

by Patricia C. Wrede

  We left early the next morning. There were six of us: Wash, Professor Torgeson, Greasy Pierre, a settlement man named Sven Grimsrud, Lan, and me. It had been over a day and a half since the Anderson brothers and Pierre had their run-in with the medusa creature at the ford, and we didn’t know how close it might be if it had followed them, so Wash and Pierre and Mr. Grimsrud had their rifles ready.

  After some arguing, we’d settled it that we would ride a lot farther apart than folks usually did when they traveled out in settlement country. The idea was to make sure the medusa thing couldn’t catch us all at once, the way it had with the Andersons’ packhorses.

  We had two sets of travel protection spells going, one that was mostly to detect anything alive that stretched out as far as Professor Torgeson could stretch it, and one that doubled up the standard traveling spell with one to keep off magic that was as close in and as strong as Lan could make it. I was paying extra-close attention to my Aphrikan world-sensing, and I was pretty sure Wash was, too.

  Greasy Pierre had the job of backtracking the route he and the Andersons had taken. It wasn’t hard; even I could sense the residue of the speed-travel spell he’d used to get them all safely back to the settlement. Wash rode next in line, then the professor, Lan, and me, with Mr. Grimsrud bringing up the rear.

  We rode for about three hours, then stopped for a break. You’d think that just riding along keeping a sharp lookout wouldn’t be much harder than the normal kind of riding through settlement country, but it was. I was glad to dismount for a minute or two.

  Two hours later, Professor Torgeson signaled for a stop and motioned everyone to come close enough to hear. “There’s a … blank area over that way,” she said, pointing at a slight angle to the direction we’d been traveling. “No animals, hardly any birds.”

  “This is suspicious,” Pierre said solemnly.

  “Is it moving?” Mr. Grimsrud asked.

  Professor Torgeson looked irritated. “There are animals everywhere else, and they are moving. Up that way, there is none.”

  “How large is the quiet area?” Wash asked.

  “About ten degrees at the far edge of the spell,” the professor replied. “We’re about a mile and a half away, as best I can estimate. It doesn’t exactly have sharp edges.”

  “We’ll head in that direction,” Wash said. “Let us know when we’re close, or if anything changes, Professor.”

  We rode a lot more cautiously after that. Wash took us north and around, hoping to come up behind the critter, if that was what it was that had caused what the professor’s spell had detected. I was a bit annoyed because even with my Aphrikan world-sensing, all I could tell was that the animals nearby were more nervous than usual. It wasn’t until we were nearly right up to the quiet area that I felt anything different.

  Right about then, Wash stopped and signaled everyone to dismount. He and Pierre had a quick talk in low voices, and then Wash took the lead. The forest was dead quiet, except when a breeze rustled the trees. It was even spookier than the grub-killed forests farther south; those at least had birds and mice and ground squirrels coming back. Everyone tried to make as little noise as possible. Even the horses moved carefully.

  Suddenly, Pierre let off a low whistle. Even though I knew it was a signal to Wash, the unexpected noise made me jump. He and Wash examined the ground, and Pierre pointed. We started off again, angling more toward the north. When we got up to where Wash and Pierre had been, I looked down and saw a paw print — four long, thin, triangular toes stretched out from a squared-off pad. I moved my horse around so it didn’t step on it.

  A short while later, we found the first petrified animal — a rabbit, caught in mid-leap. Wash had us spread out even farther, for safety. And the farther apart we got, the more nervous I felt.

  We didn’t know how the petrification magic worked, really. Mr. Macleod had said that Mr. Anderson’s leg had still been part flesh on the inside, and I couldn’t help wondering whether the horses and the animals that turned to stone had been, too. The ones we’d found at Daybat Creek had been stone through and through, but they were old. Maybe the magic had changed. Or maybe it didn’t work all at once; maybe it turned things to stone slowly, from the outside in. I wondered what that would be like. Would it hurt? Would you feel the stone creeping slowly inward, knowing what was happening, or did the magic just kill things and then turn them to stone? It hadn’t killed Mr. Anderson, quite. I shuddered, and decided not to think about it anymore.

  We followed the tracks for a long way, until Pierre signaled again. “Not far now,” he said.

  Wash nodded. “I think —” He broke off, raising his head like a deer scenting a saber cat on the wind. I felt it, too — a ripple right at the edge of my world-sensing, from the direction we’d come. Wash muttered something I figured it was just as well I hadn’t heard clearly. “It’s cut back toward the track we made coming in. At this rate, we’ll circle each other for hours.”

  Mr. Grimsrud gave Wash a puzzled look, but he didn’t ask how Wash could know such a thing.

  “It likes horses,” Lan said. “We could use ours for bait.”

  Pierre and Mr. Grimsrud looked at him as if he was clean out of his wits, but Wash thought on it for a minute, then nodded. “It’s worth a try. If we lose them, we’re still close enough to walk back to the settlement. Professor, you can drop your detecting spell for now and grab a gun. Miss Eff—” He paused, scanning the woods. “You have your rifle? Good. Take yourself back there behind those boulders, and keep an eye out. Don’t make a sound, and if you think something’s coming, shoot first and ask questions later.” He pointed out positions for everyone else, then turned to Lan. “Mr. Rothmer —”

  “Lan.”

  “— Lan, as soon as we have the horses tied and are in position, drop the travel spells and get back to the boulders with your sister.”

  “Drop the travel spells?” Mr. Grimsrud said doubtfully.

  “So the critter can find us,” Wash said. “And so it doesn’t get a big boost to its magic by draining Lan here the way it did your Mr. Anderson.” He’d already fastened his horse good and tight to a tree. “Hurry up, before it gets out of range.”

  Mr. Grimsrud still looked doubtful, but he went ahead and did what Wash had told him. I went back to the little heap of boulders and crouched down behind it. I was surprised that Lan hadn’t objected to Wash’s directions. He’d never much liked being left out of whatever was happening. I was even more surprised when I felt the travel spells drop and he didn’t join me back of the boulders.

  There was a long, tense silence. I could still feel the strange ripple out at the edge of my world-sensing, but it didn’t seem to be getting nearer. Lan made no move to find cover; he just stood there next to the horses. And then I felt a bright blaze of magic all around me, and the ripple paused and began to move straight toward us. I whipped around to glare at Lan, and as soon as I saw the reckless grin on his face, I knew exactly what he was doing.

  Lan was using himself as bait.

  CHAPTER

  28

  RIGHT AWAY, WITHOUT EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT, I STOOD UP AND ran over to Lan. He looked startled; he looked even more startled when I smacked his cheek as hard as I could. It knocked him sprawling backward. “Eff! Cut it out!” he whispered.

  “You stop that this instant!” I hissed at him. “That thing will be here in a minute.”

  “Good,” Lan said, getting up. “Don’t whack me again; I don’t want to be distracted.”

  “Lan, stop it!” I grabbed his arm and tried to drag him back to the boulders, but he was taller and stronger than I was, and I didn’t get him very far. I could feel the ripple getting closer, and then I felt something, some magic, come at us. At Lan.

  I twitched it aside, the way I’d been twitching and tweaking my Avrupan spells for nigh on two years. It was more difficult to do than I’d expected; whatever it was, it was homing in on Lan like a pigeon headed back to its nest. I just barely knoc
ked it off course enough to send it whizzing past Lan’s left ear.

  “What —”

  “Turn it off, Lan!” I felt another bolt of magic come toward us. I shoved this one harder, but when I did, it tried to latch on to my magic like a leech. It didn’t quite succeed. I think it was confused by the waves of magic coming off of Lan and by the fact that I was using Aphrikan magic. Even so, it sucked out enough of my magic to make me dizzy before I pushed it away.

  “Eff!”

  I blinked up at Lan’s worried face. I realized that he’d caught me as I started to fall, and pulled both of us back behind the boulders. But he was still shining his magic out just as hard as ever he could. “Stop it,” I croaked, and finally he did.

  “Eff, what —”

  “Later,” I said. “Quiet now.” And for a wonder, he was.

  I pushed myself upright. My head hurt like anything, and getting my Aphrikan world-sensing working again just made it hurt worse. At least I’d hung on to my rifle. Then the horses started rearing and pulling against their tethers. A moment later, I heard a hooting noise, just like Pierre had described.

  Two of the horses went gray and froze. An instant later, something large flew through the tree branches and landed just on the other side of the horses from me and Lan. I got an impression of gray-brown scales and lots of sharp teeth as the thing whipped its head side to side. I couldn’t get a shot with all the horses plunging and pulling at their tethers, but somebody fired. I thought they’d missed, because the thing didn’t react, but then there were three more shots in quick succession, and none of them hurt the thing, either.

  The creature slid forward, just past the horses, and I finally got a good look at it. It was an enormous gray-brown lizard. Its front legs were short, but even standing low to the ground, its head would have come as high as my chest if I’d been fool enough to stand beside it. In back, its legs were longer and more muscular, like a frog’s back legs. They looked strong enough to kick a dire wolf halfway across the Mammoth River, and I didn’t wonder that it could jump so high and far as it had. It had a large head with a mouth like a bird’s beak with teeth, long enough that they could take off a man’s arm to the elbow in one bite, if it had a mind to.

  I pulled the trigger, but my shot had no more effect on the thing than anyone else’s. Well, it had one — the medusa lizard hissed and turned its head toward Lan and me. As I pumped the lever to reload my rifle, I saw a bump in the crt of the lizard’s forehead, covered by a patch of white scales. As I watched, the scales pulled back, like a third eyelid, revealing a glossy black knob underneath. It opened its mouth, and I got a real good look at all of its sharp teeth.

  Lan’s eyes narrowed, and he let his magic loose again. I grabbed at his arm, but before I could say anything, I felt him give a push. An enormous wave of magic went past me. The creature gave a high-pitched shriek and reared back on its hind legs, shaking its head. Four rifles cracked, and bloody holes appeared on its underbelly. It fell over and lay still.

  I glanced over at Lan. He was staring at the medusa lizard, his lips twisted. “It couldn’t handle me any better than Professor Warren did,” he said, so low that I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to hear.

  After a minute, Wash appeared from behind a tree. He kept his rifle at the ready as he walked to the lizard and examined it. Then he lowered his gun and called, “It’s dead.”

  We came out from behind the boulders. Lan staggered and leaned against the nearest one, looking tired and drained but satisfied. The others appeared from behind trees. Professor Torgeson went to join Wash beside the medusa lizard. Pierre and Mr. Grimsrud went for the remaining horses, to try to calm them. And then I felt another ripple, behind me. Close behind.

  I shoved Lan down and crouched beside him. One glance was enough to tell me he wouldn’t be any help; he’d used up everything he had on the first critter. Everyone but Lan and me was on the far side of the horses. I swallowed hard and poked my head out from behind the boulders, sighting along the rifle barrel and hoping I would get a clear shot at the thing before it hurt me or Lan. And with all my heart, I wished that it wouldn’t see me before I saw it.

  Wash’s wooden pendant went ice-cold against my chest, and I felt all the don’t-notice-it spells unwrap from around it and expand just a little. Just enough to cover me and Lan, as well as the pendant. A second later, I felt the magic leeching, looking for us, but it slid away without finding either of us.

  I saw a flash of movement between the trees and everything slowed. My world-sensing spread out around me, clearer and stronger than ever before. I could sense the ants hurrying up and down the bark of the trees in front of me, and the beetles burrowing in the ground below. Farther out, behind a screen of leaves, I felt the second medusa lizard pull the scales back from the knob on its forehead and open its mouth to send its petrifying magic straight at Lan and me. More important, I could sense exactly where the lizard was, even if I couldn’t see it, and I knew the track my bullet would take when I fired. I moved my rifle barrel a hairsbreadth to the left and squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet hit square on the black knob in the lizard’s forehead. It didn’t even have time to shriek before it fell over and died.

  The world speeded up back to normal, and I felt the not-noticing spells pull back and wrap tight around the pendant once more.

  “Got it,” I said, but I pumped the lever to reload, just in case.

  This time, nobody lowered their rifles until Professor Torgeson had cast every detection spell she could think of, and at least one that she made up right there on the spot, to make sure there were no more medusa lizards around. Wash stood beside her with his eyes narrowed, and I knew he was pushing his Aphrikan world sense as hard as it would go, checking for the same thing. They both nodded at about the same time, and everyone relaxed at last.

  Wash came over to Lan and me. He was frowning and his eyes were still narrowed. “Which of you was playing games with this thing?”

  “I — what — how did you —” Lan finally just stopped and stared.

  I sighed. “He knows the same way I knew. Aphrikan world-sensing. You should have stopped when I told you to.”

  “We needed better bait,” Lan said unrepentantly. “And it worked, didn’t it?”

  “After a fashion,” Wash said. “You’ll be the one that overloaded the first one, too, I expect. We’ll talk later, Mr. Rothmer.”

  “I — yes, sir.”

  Wash gave him a small smile and added, “It was a dreadful chance to take, and I wouldn’t recommend doing anything like it ever again. But I do believe we’d have had a lot more trouble with that first one if you hadn’t done as you did.”

  “Thank you,” Lan said.

  “Mr. Rothmer, if you have any abilities left after your attempted heroics, I could use your help with a preservation spell,” Professor Torgeson called. “We have to get this back to the college for study.”

  “It’s fifteen feet long!” Lan objected, but he headed toward her.

  Wash cocked an eyebrow at me. I was pretty sure what he wanted to ask. I put one hand to my chest, over the spot where the pendant lay hidden against my skin. “It was what I needed to know,” I said.

  “Ah,” was all he said, but he looked pleased.

  With only four horses left and the medusa lizard to haul back, we had to walk back to Big Bear Lake. None of the horses would have the medusa lizard anywhere near them, preservation spell or not. We finally had to rig up a sort of sled for one of them to drag along behind, and tie the dead medusa lizard to that. Between that and walking, it was well past dark when we finally got to the settlement.

  The settlers wanted to make much of us for killing the medusa lizards, but Wash wasn’t having it. He went into plenty of detail about the fight, and made an especial point of how fortunate we’d been that the first critter reared back and gave us a shot at his underbelly, and that the second one had gone down to a lucky shot. He didn’t mention Lan lighting himself up
like a beacon for bait, or me using Aphrikan world-sensing to help aim, for which I was grateful. He also suggested that the settlers use an express rifle, or at least something a bit more heavy-duty than our repeaters, if they had occasion to hunt medusa lizards in the future.

  “In the future?” one of the settlers said. “You mean there are more of those things out there?”

  Professor Torgeson snorted. “You think there were only two of them in the whole wide world? Of course there are more!”

  “Though hopefully the rest of them are still out in the Far West, where these two came from,” Wash put in.

  We stayed on at Big Bear Lake for nearly a week, because Wash wanted to head out with Pierre to see for sure and certain that there weren’t any more medusa lizards around. They found a few petrified animals, but only ever tracks from the pair we’d shot, which went a fair way to reassuring the settlers. By the time we left, Olaf Anderson was on his way to mending, though he and his wife hadn’t gotten so far as to decide whether they’d stay on in the settlement.

  On our way back to Mill City, Wash and Lan had a couple of long conversations. I didn’t ask what they said, and Lan didn’t tell me, but I could see that Lan was feeling a lot better.

  I spent a lot of time on the ride talking with Professor Torgeson. She was particularly interested in the way I’d felt the first lizard’s magic leeching, and in the way I’d twitched it aside. She and Wash had been so busy concentrating on killing the lizard that they hadn’t had time to pay attention to its magic, and that was going to be important if they were going to figure out a way to add it to the settlement spells.

  As soon as we got back, Professor Torgeson disappeared into her lab, along with Professor Jeffries and the carcass of the medusa lizard. That left Wash and Lan and me to explain things to the Settlement Office and everyone else. The newspapers got hold of it, and it was a right circus. A week later, the professors put out a short, dry, extra-scientific summary of what they’d found out so far from examining the dead medusa lizard, and that set the whole thing off again. It would have been even worse if the professors had told them everything.