“This is the neutral ground?”
“This is one neutral ground,” he said. “From here, you will find there is even more power, and a connection to the other side of the Veil which is not present otherwise.”
“And we can use that to cross the Veil?”
I glanced over to John Adams, wondering whether it was going to be successful. This was the part of the plan I was least confident in.
“I guess we’re going to find out,” Darvish said.
He made his way to the center of the room and dragged John Adams with him. I hesitated a moment before following. Though there wasn’t a lot of space here, there was enough for me to stand alongside John Adams and Darvish.
“What now?”
“Normally, I would suggest we needed to use a spell, but I wonder if you might be able to do this.”
“Me? I don’t know if I’m strong enough to get us across the Veil.”
“I think you might be surprised by what you are strong enough to do. As I said, it’s not about quantity of strength but about the quality.”
I focused on the circle and debated what power I needed to push out into it. I didn’t know whether my ability to trigger magic would extend to using it on things like this or not. I pushed power out, letting it flow into the circle around us. The circle seemed to absorb my connection to magic. As it did, it pulled more and more from me. I didn’t need to use a spell coin, not like I did when I was trying to open one of Barden’s doors. This was different in that the power which flowed from me did not require such a connection—or magic.
Slowly the circle was triggered. As it did, a strange energy washed over me. “Darvish?”
“Keep going, Dr. Stone.”
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing.”
“Whatever you’re doing is working.”
Even though it was working, I still wasn’t sure what exactly it was I was doing. But I was trying to trigger the circle. More and more power poured out of me, and surprisingly, I found I didn’t have the same limitations as usual. That must have been related to standing in the circle, and being surrounded by power which came from the other side of the Veil.
And then, the power washed over us.
13
A sense worked over me like a cold chill. It reminded me somewhat of using magic, but it also reminded me of jumping into an ice bath after playing basketball in high school. We had a coach who had thought that was the best way to recover, and seeing as how I rarely got injured, it had apparently worked. Looking back, I didn’t think my lack of injuries was from my magical connection, though maybe it had been.
I could hear Darvish gasping, and knew whatever was happening to me was happening to him. But what about John Adams? He was immobilized, the paralytic holding him in place, but would the spell washing over both of us also impact him in the same way? What if it removed what Darvish was holding him in? There was a possibility that in my using power like this and crossing over the Veil too, we would lose our hold on John Adams. And if we did, then what? Then again, now I was doing this, did we even need him? He had knowledge of the other side, though so did Darvish. But there was another reason I thought he would be useful. John Adams had been hunting for Kate and given his connection to the other side and his overall power in general, it was possible he would have enough knowledge and ties to be able to find out what had happened to Kate. Darvish had lost her, so even if he returned to the other side of the Veil, it was possible he wouldn’t know how or where to find her alone.
The cold ran all the way through me. It was a strange and overwhelming sense. I was left practically shaking and felt as if I couldn’t do anything else. I wanted to move, to release my hold on magic, but worried that if I did, whatever I was trying to use while crossing the Veil would fail. I needed to continue holding this power. I cried out. The overwhelming sense of cold beat at me, working through me in such a way that I could do nothing else.
And then it faded. As it did, I realized there was a brightness all around me. It took me a moment to realize why that should be, and also that we were standing out in bright sunlight, within a forest clearing with crumbling stone all around us, looking like the remains of a medieval city. There was a circle on this side which matched the one we had just come from, and though there was no metal in it, there was a ring of darker stone.
“You did it,” Darvish said.
“You sound surprised.”
“I wasn’t sure it would work. You have a unique gift, Dr. Stone.”
“This is the other side of the Veil?”
Darvish took a deep breath, and when he breathed out, he opened his eyes. “This is the other side of the Veil. There’s a distinct signature to the air.”
“I don’t smell anything.”
“The more you’re here, the more attuned you will be to it. It has taken me some time to be able to recognize that odor to the air. It’s a hint of magic, but it’s also something else I can’t put my finger on.”
I looked around me. Though there were trees nearby, and they were an unfamiliar type. Many of them had long slender trunks leading up to massive branches, which hung high overhead, arching over us and blocking out the sunlight. We were left within the middle of the clearing, and only a single shaft of sunlight shown down through it. The remains of the crumbling stone buildings around us suggested that this had once been someplace greater.
“Where is this place?”
“I’m not sure. We didn’t cross here when I came with Dr. Michaels.”
“But you have to have an idea where it is.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t. There are enough unique places on this side of the Veil to make it difficult for me to identify where we might have crossed. Even distances are tricky here. Part of that comes from when you walk, you will feel the way that magic flows through you.”
“Are you sure it’s going to flow through me the same way?”
“Step outside of the circle,” Darvish said.
I glanced over to him, noticing that John Adams remain confined, unmoving. I wasn’t sure whether there was anything we were going to risk by keeping him with us, though if he were to escape on this side of the Veil, he would need to have enough power in order to cross back over.
Then again, I doubted it would be a challenge for him. He would know how to find other places of neutral ground. He might choose to escape, cross back over to the side of the Veil, and continue his plans, whatever they were. Likely he would begin reorganizing the Shara.
Taking a hesitant step forward, I crossed the edge of the ring of power, and when I did, there was a faint tingling along my skin. It passed quickly, but then I felt something else. It was almost an energy within the air, and it made the hairs on my arms stand up, and it coursed through me. Cold persisted, a wash of it along the surface of my skin, leaving goosebumps standing tall.
“Do you feel it?” Darvish asked.
“What am I supposed to be feeling?”
“Considering your connection to magic, I would’ve expected you to detect the same thing I can detect, though you should be able to do it without even using a spell.”
“This is magic?”
“All around you,” Darvish said. He stepped forward, dragging John Adams with him. He took in a deep breath, and looked at the trees, staring up at the peaks of them before turning his gaze back to me. “All around us is the sense of magic. It’s everywhere. Take a deep breath and you can feel it, though I suspect you can feel it in a different way to the rest of us who cross over here.”
I was able to focus on the chill along my arms. It was different from what I felt back on our side. Here, there was no sense to the bracelet. This surprised me, considering that I was used to the sense of magic coming from the bracelet first, before heading down my arms and through my body. On this side of the Veil, the sense of magic came from everywhere, and it left the entire surface of my skin chilled, almost as if there was cold burning through the air. “How will I know if someone
is around me using magic?”
Darvish joined me, though he looked back at the ruins of the buildings, his gaze lingering on the circle. It was almost as if he were trying to study it, to determine whether it would be a place we could get back to once more, if it came down to it. I suspected it was necessary, given we would eventually have to find our way back across the Veil. In order to do so, we would need to have a place like it.
And there was a timeframe over which we could safely stay. From what John Adams had said, a few hours was all his people could tolerate. I doubted I would be able to tolerate being on this side of the Veil for long, so I had to set an internal clock.
Maybe I could use my phone. I pulled it out. It didn’t work.
Darvish smiled at me. “Electronics don’t work on this side of the Veil.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think the magic here agrees with them. It doesn’t seem to damage them. When I returned, my phone was still working, though I needed to charge it.”
“How will we know how much time has passed?”
“Are you afraid of staying too long?”
I glanced over to John Adams. “He did say it was difficult for people to tolerate being on this side of the Veil for too long.”
“He did, and it is, but I suspect you will be fine.”
“It’s more than just my ability to tolerate being on this side of the Veil I’m worried about,” I said.
“What else are you worried about?”
“I do have a job to go to, back home.”
“I think that job might need to be put on hold.”
I shook my head. It was the same thing Barden had tried to convince me of, and I had the same reaction to Darvish as I had to Barden. I wasn’t at all keen to give up my practice of medicine, even if it came down to deciding between that and magic. I wasn’t sure how easily I could decide between the two, though at this point in my life, I didn’t want to have to decide. I wanted to be able to use magic, and I didn’t want to have to abandon it just so I could have power, but I also didn’t want to risk drawing in anyone who shouldn’t be involved in the magical world. As usual, I thought about Brad. What would happen if he got drawn into this magical world? He didn’t have any magical ties. Then again, he hadn’t been around me when I’d been using magic, so there was no way for me to tell if he was deterred by it or not.
“I’m not going to put my job on hold,” I said. “So we need to move quickly.” A couple hours on this side of the Veil could be a couple days on the other side. “Can you track Barden in any way?” I asked.
“Maybe once, but I was gone for too long. The connections I had with Barden are changed.”
“I have something magical he made. Would that help?”
Darvish pressed his lips together into a tight frown. “It might work.”
I reached into my pocket, sorting through the various spell coins. There were dozens of them. Pulling out one of the paralytic coins, I handed it over to Darvish. He twisted the coin his hand, flipping it from side to side, before squeezing it. “How do you use it?”
“You have to trigger it by focusing on who you want the spell to target.”
“That’s it?”
“For me it is. I suspect that for you, with your training, it would be more involved.”
“Perhaps I should’ve practiced with it before, but now isn’t the time.” He squeezed on it, and power built from him, rolling through him. As it did, it touched on the coin. I worried for a moment that he was going to trigger it and I didn’t want to spend the power within the spell coins. It had taken enough energy out of me to make them, and on this side of the Veil, we needed to have all the spell coins we could, mostly in order to ensure we were safe.
But rather than triggering the paralytic, there was a different power flowing. I was able to determine what it was, though there was a sense of magic that came from Darvish, swirling around the coin. I suspected it was a tracking spell, and considering how Barden had been the one to create the coin, I had to hope the tracking spell would somehow grant the ability to find out what had happened to Barden.
Rather than watching what he was doing, my focus was on John Adams. I fished in my pocket, searching for another potential spell to use. I had it ready, watching John Adams for the moment he might begin to wake up, especially as time traveled faster on this side of the Veil. I had to wonder if it would allow him to metabolize the effects of the paralytic spell far more rapidly on this side of the Veil than back home.
Surprisingly, he remained motionless. I couldn’t tell if Darvish was holding onto a spell on him or not, or whether he was faking. Either way, there was nothing from John Adams which suggested he was any danger to us.
After a moment of using his connection, Darvish handed the coin back to me. “I don’t detect anything.”
“Does that mean he’s not on this side of the Veil?”
Darvish frowned, looking over to John Adams. “If he was still back on the other side, he would have been more attentive to his prisoner. The fact he wasn’t suggested something happened. Whether or not that’s him traveling to this side of the Veil or not, that makes the most sense, given what we know.”
I had felt the same way. Knowing Barden as I did, I suspected he would have come to this side of the Veil, and considering that both Veran and Cynthia were missing suggested they had all come here.
Was there any way for me—or us, I thought, thinking of Darvish—to use our connection to Kate? I focused on where I had heard her in my mind. It was a faint and distant sense, and it had been there, coming through clear as a bell, and I had to wonder if coming to this side of the Veil would allow me to reach her more easily. “Where are you?” I whispered.
There was nothing. I glanced over to Darvish. “Can you focus on whether you can detect anything from Kate?”
“I’ve been doing that for the better part of the last week, and I haven’t come up with anything,” Darvish said. “It’s why I returned in the first place. When I got separated from her, I tried to reconnect, but there wasn’t any way for me to reach her. Either she’s not on this side, or something is preventing her from reaching us.”
“But she reached me.”
“She did.” Darvish sounded frustrated, though he didn’t share anything more.
Focusing again on the sense of power deep within me, I called out to Kate. “We’ve crossed the Veil.” I wasn’t sure if there was a trick to it, some way of communicating to her I wasn’t fully aware of, though there had to be more than what I was doing. As I focused, I waited and listened, praying there would be a response from her, but there was nothing. “Maybe this was a mistake,” I said.
“If you can trigger the circle again, we can cross back to our side.”
“Or we can try to wake up John Adams and see what he might know,” I said.
“Why would he know anything?”
“He was trying to draw her across.”
“That would have been a mistake.”
“Why?”
“If he managed to bring Kate back to our side of the Veil, he wouldn’t have enough power to contain her.”
“Is she really that powerful?”
“She is more powerful than anyone I’ve ever met. At least, back on our side.”
“Then there are more powerful people on this side of the Veil?”
“There are beings of equal power on this side. I think, when it comes down to it, Kate’s power belongs on this side of the Veil, though she belongs on our side. It makes it complicated. Messy. And, it’s why the creatures on this side aren’t sure what to make of her. She’s not of this world, and yet, she can’t handle leaving it.”
There was no voice in my head, nothing which suggested Kate would be anywhere nearby. “Maybe we need to walk a little bit,” I said.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Darvish said.
“Why not?”
“We run the risk of getting lost.”
“But we kno
w where the circle is.”
“We know where it is now, but the moment we start to move, the more likely it is we will lose track of ourselves. Trust me, it’s dangerous on this side. Everything starts to change, and without someone who can help us navigate, we can easily get lost.”
The idea left me unsettled. How long would we wander if we ended up getting lost? We didn’t have enough power to fight our way around on this side, and if we ended up lost, then we could end up facing demons or worse. “You want us just to stay here?”
“At least we know there’s a way back.”
“What did you hope to accomplish by coming with me?” I asked.
“I thought when we crossed the Veil, we might be able to hear Kate or Barden. With there being no connection to them, I no longer know whether it’s safe for us to stay.”
“We can’t just stay in this place. If they are over here—”
“If they’re here, then we need to be thoughtful and plan what we are going to do. It’s also incredibly dangerous for us to remain. Trust me, Dr. Stone, I have more than my share of experience on this side of the Veil, and I understand just how dangerous this place is.
He set John Adams down within the circle, and rather than continuing to push the paralytic on him, Darvish stepped back, and used the circle to hold John Adams inside it. Power surged—something I could almost feel. It tingled along my skin in a way it hadn’t before, leaving a faint chill flowing along my arms.
Within a few moments, John Adams began coming round. When he did, he looked at us, getting to his feet and standing within the circle. “You did it,” he said, sneering at us.
“You didn’t think we’d be able to cross the Veil?”
“I wasn’t sure, but with your talent, Dr. Stone, I had begun to wonder if it might be possible.”
“What do you know about Kate?” I asked.
“Now you think you can use my help?”
“That was the agreement,” I said.
“No. The agreement was I would help you find a way across the Veil.”
“And it seems I managed to do so on my own, not with your help. So, anything you might have to offer is a moot point. What you need to do now is find a way of making yourself useful. Prove you can offer us something.”
Lost Cause Page 13
