Scorched Earth

by Randall Pine

  Then he pulled at the stopper of the second bottle. The cork had frozen against the glass; he had to use his teeth to break the rime and shimmy the stopper out. He spat the cork onto the floor just as the poison reached his heart. The inky blackness coated the beating muscle, then it began to sink in. The pain and the heat of it were unbearable.

  Llewyn bellowed in agony. He had only precious seconds now. He raised the vial to his lips and tipped the blue cryo-stasis potion down his throat.

  The effect was immediate. The potion crystallized against the soft tissue in his esophagus and spread its ice through his body at the speed of lightning. It covered his organs, froze the blood and poison in his veins, crackled over his skin, frosted his beard, turned his hair to ice, and even spread outward from his body, crystallizing into icicles in the air, like a frozen sunburst.

  Llewyn stood against the wall, now nothing more than a rough-cut ice sculpture of a man, frozen completely solid from the inside out.

  Chapter 18

  “Did you know there are mines beneath our mountains?” Virgil asked, incredulous.

  “Of course I know that. Everybody knows that.”

  Virgil frowned. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I thought you ‘paid attention,’” Simon scoffed.

  “Not in history class,” Virgil grumped.

  They were back in Simon’s old Pontiac, zooming toward the East River. Virgil was sitting in the passenger seat with his feet up on the dashboard, a habit that Simon hated, but it was a battle he learned long ago wasn’t worth the effort of fighting. “I thought you were trying to get ahold of Abby,” Simon pointed out.

  “I tried. I’ve texted her, like, eight times. She’s not responding.”

  “Why don’t you try calling her?”

  Virgil made a sour look with his face. “Who calls people?” he asked. “She’s probably still at Llewyn’s...he gets terrible service. So in the meantime, I’m Googling ‘mud miner monsters Templar.’”

  “The NSA is going to love that,” Simon said, rolling his eyes.

  Virgil ignored him. “It says here the mountains east of Templar used to be big coal mining territory. Most of the mines around the Stocks were owned by J. P. Grimsley, whoever that was—”

  “Early 20th century heir of the ultra-rich family that founded Templar,” Simon interrupted. “Geez, Virgil, you really don’t pay attention to history. There are, like, twenty buildings in Templar named after the Grimsleys. Including the old opera house that is literally four blocks from our apartment.”

  “How would I know that?” Virgil asked indignantly. “I hate opera. Now listen. This says Grimsley had a whole series of mines down there, and in 1927, there was a huge collapse, and over fifty miners died in the cave-in.” He looked up from his phone and stared thoughtfully at the road ahead. “Holy Hamburg. Do you think the woman in the cloak booby-trapped the woods with the mud-ghost of a poor, dead miner?”

  “Virgil, of course I think the woman in the cloak booby-trapped the woods with the mud-ghost of a dead miner. There was never a single second where that was even a question. Of course she booby-trapped it with the mud-ghost of a miner, did you not see the giant mud-ghost of the miner that tried to take off your head with his pickaxe?!”

  “Wow. Being summoned up as a mud-ghost to do the dirty work for some psychopath who attacks teenagers with lightning.” Virgil gave a low whistle. “Talk about adding insult to injury.”

  “Did you find anything about Furtive Hills?” Simon asked.

  “Oh, right.” Virgil looked back down at his phone and began tapping the screen. After a minute or two, he frowned. “Nothing,” he declared. “Like, nothing nothing.” He looked up at Simon. “I guess they take the ‘furtive’ part of the name pretty seriously, huh?”

  “Keep looking,” Simon urged, navigating the highway. “They put the name on the side of a van, they’re not exactly hiding it. There has to be something.”

  “I’m telling you, there’s—” Virgil stopped himself mid-sentence. He slid his finger frantically over the screen, scrolling down the page in front of him. “Wait. Got something.”

  “What is it?”

  Virgil held up the phone so Simon could see. “Reddit.”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Find something else,” he said.

  “Hey, Reddit is great,” Virgil replied, pulling back the phone and sounding offended. “Reddit knows things.”

  “Reddit thinks World War II was faked,” Simon mumbled.

  “You can’t prove that it wasn’t,” Virgil pointed out. “Now listen. There’s a thread by some guy from Templar who says he’s seen the van a few times, up in the mountains. He thought it was weird that he couldn’t find anything when he researched it, so he followed the van one time, down into the valley on the other side of the Bypass Mountains.”

  “This is riveting stuff,” Simon sighed.

  “Just listen! It’s about to get good,” Virgil promised. “He followed the van down into the valley, and it was really foggy. ‘Intensely foggy,’ he says. The Furtive Hills van disappeared into the fog, and the Redditor followed it in…and when he came out on the other end, going up the other side of the mountain, the Furtive Hills van had vanished.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, it vanished?”

  “It says he was behind the van on one side of the valley, lost sight of it in the fog, then when he came out of the fog, there was no more van.”

  “So it turned off the road?”

  “He says there was no turn-off. No other roads, no shoulder, no trails—nothing. The van just disappeared.”

  “Vans don’t just disappear,” Simon pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, basements don’t just pulse with red light, lightning bolts don’t just shrivel up human beings, and Skee-Balls don’t just go blasting through mud-ghosts, but here we are.”

  Simon sighed again. He sounded almost as weary as he felt. “So we have a disappearing van from a place that doesn’t exist, teenagers who are brought to the brink of death by a series of targeted lightning storms, and a mysterious woman in a purple cloak who manages the whole thing and can summon up mud-ghosts even though she doesn’t register as even a little bit magical on Llewyn’s map.”

  Virgil looked up. He blinked. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds like we’re in over our heads.”

  “No kidding.”

  Simon pulled the car over along the East River viaduct, next to the Mallard Street Bridge, and got out. Virgil popped off his seatbelt and followed Simon over the lips of the concrete ditch. “I don’t think this is going to make my Top Five weekends ever,” he decided.

  “I think it’s about to fall even further down the list,” Simon said, suddenly alarmed. “Look.” He pointed toward Llewyn’s tent.

  The entire structure had collapsed into a lifeless heap of canvas, its fraying edges fluttering in the wind.

  Chapter 19

  “Llewyn?!”

  They sprinted over to the fallen tarp, and Simon yanked up one of the corners. There was nothing underneath but a cold, oily slope of concrete. “Llewyn!”

  Virgil pulled up another corner of the tarp. He crouched down and dove beneath it, searching frantically. But there was nothing under the tarp except the drainage ditch.

  “What happened?” he cried, re-emerging from the far end of the canvas sheet.

  “Llewyn!” Simon whipped the tarp around, and it came away freely in his hand, twirling in the breeze.

  “Did he leave?” Virgil asked frantically.

  “Why would he leave? Where would he go?” Simon snapped.

  “I don’t know!”

  “And he’s just going to leave the tarp here, dragging across the ground?”

  “I don’t know!” Virgil said again, throwing up his hands in helplessness.

 
“Llewyn!” Simon paced around the concrete slope, running his hands manically through his blond hair. His mind raced with possibilities, none of them good. “Maybe someone took them,” he said, his voice high-pitched with fear.

  “Took them?”

  “Yes—them! Llewyn and Abby! Abby was coming here to see Llewyn...what if someone took Llewyn and Abby?”

  “Who would come ‘take’ Llewyn? You can’t just walk up and kidnap a wizard! You can’t pull a gun and say, ‘Get in the van or I’ll shoot!’ He’s a wizard; he could turn the gun into a viper and have it bite the guy in the face!”

  “Well, maybe they weren’t taken, but something—” Simon froze mid-sentence. He reached out his hand and felt the air around him. “Virgil. Come feel this.”

  Virgil trotted forward, extending his hands, waving them slowly through the air. “What am I feeling for?”

  “Right here.” Simon snatched Virgil’s hand and dragged it around in a circle. “Do you feel that?”

  Virgil frowned at Simon. “It’s cold,” he said.

  “It’s freezing.”

  “But just right here,” Virgil said. His face screwed up in confusion. “What is that?”

  “I told you, something’s not right,” Simon said, shaking his head and resuming his frantic pacing. “They weren’t taken...they’re still in there.”

  Virgil started. “Still in where?”

  “Still in the tent! Still in the mansion!” Simon exploded, throwing up his hands. “They’re still here, it’s just not…here!”

  Virgil rolled his eyes. “Makes a lot of sense.”

  Simon huffed in frustration. He scanned the space beneath the bridge and noticed something he hadn’t seen before. There was a length of rope stretched between two pieces of rebar that jutted out from the concrete of the bridge, likely the central line that suspended the tarp above the ground. Simon grabbed one edge of the tarp and threw it over the rope.

  “What’re you doing?” Virgil asked.

  “I’m rebuilding the tent. Give me a hand.”

  They struggled with the thick canvas, pulling it down between the rope and the bridge and smoothing it across the top, from one piece of rebar to the other. Simon grabbed one edge and shook it out, making one side of the tent full and wide. Virgil ran over to the other side and did the same on that edge. With the tent reconstructed, they ran around and met at the front opening and stuck their heads inside.

  There was nothing but darkness beneath the tarp.

  “Come on!” Simon screamed. He stepped forward, planning to rip the canvas down from the inside in his anger, but as soon as he took a step, he smashed face-first into a solid black wall.

  It was Llewyn’s camouflage barrier.

  The mansion was back.

  Excitedly, Simon began to beat on the tangible void, slamming his fists against it and calling the wizard’s name. Then something very unexpected happened: the wall splintered and cracked under the force of his hands, and then it broke away completely, shattering like glass.

  “Is it…supposed to break like that?” Virgil asked.

  Simon ducked into the tent, and Virgil followed. Simon gasped when he saw the state of the dwelling beneath the magical canvas.

  Llewyn’s mansion was in absolute ruin.

  The heavy stones set into the floor were cracked and broken, their jagged edges jutting up into small, sharp crags. Some of the pieces had been pulverized to dust, as if they’d been crushed, or eroded by wind and weather over several millennia. The timber planks along the wall and ceiling were dry, brittle, and breaking away from their moorings. The chandelier in the sitting room had broken free of its chains and had crashed down onto the chest that served as the table between the couches. The thick candles stuck into the chandelier were cold and lifeless, and the heavy circular, wooden band that looped them together had splintered and broken against the chest.

  The upholstery of the couches was torn, with stuffing poking out between the cracks in the leather. One of the legs of the couch nearest them had broken away completely, and the sofa tilted down at one corner. The hallway beyond the great room had actually started to collapse, with the wall caving in and creating a landslide of stone and wood and dust that extended back toward the far end of the hall.

  The air was chilly, the floor was covered with a thin rime of frost, and every single thing was freezing cold to the touch.

  “This is bad, right?” Virgil breathed, taking in the damage and running his hand against the cold timber on the wall. “This is…I mean, this is really bad.”

  Simon didn’t respond. He was already sprinting toward the back hall. “Llewyn!” he shouted, leaping over the debris from the fallen chandelier, skidding dangerously on his landing, righting himself in the nick of time and continuing on across the broken stones. “Abby!”

  Virgil hurried after him, skirting around the worst of the carnage and following Simon down the hallway. They had to go in at an angle, treading carefully over the loose rocks and bracing themselves with one hand on the slope of the caved-in stones and wood. They shimmied their way down the hall, trying every door they came to and finding them all locked. Virgil was about to suggest that Simon could try his curiocus key in one of the locks when they came to a door that stood wide open. Simon peered through the opening, and his eyes grew wide in horror.

  “Abby!”

  He leapt off the pile of rubble and sprinted through the doorway. Abby was lying on the floor halfway down the hall, in front of Llewyn’s unmoving form, struggling to her knees as Simon rushed forward. He slid down to his knees and grabbed her shoulders, helping her up to a kneeling position. “Abby!” he said again, frantically searching her face for signs of life and lucidity. “Are you okay? What happened? Are you okay?!”

  Abby looked up slowly and blinked at Simon as if she didn’t recognize him. Then her eyes cleared, and something in her mind snapped back into place. “Simon,” she whispered. She sighed with relief, collapsing a little and leaning into his chest for support.

  Simon wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close. In stark contrast to everything else in the mansion, her skin burned with some unseen fire. Sweat matted her purple hair down in wet tendrils against her clammy forehead. Her skin was ashen and gray.

  “Abby,” Simon muttered, sweeping back her hair and holding her close, “what happened?”

  “Uhh…Llewyn’s a popsicle.” Virgil prodded the cold, ice-covered wizard with one finger. The ice that encased him was several inches thick. Virgil looked down at Simon with wide, searching eyes. “This is really, really, really bad,” he decided.

  “You think?” Simon snapped. Something behind Llewyn’s frozen form caught his eye. There was a smear of red on the wall that looked like blood at first, but after closer inspection, it was too bright. Plus, neither Abby nor Llewyn, as far as he could tell, was bleeding, and there were no other signs of blood in the hall.

  Simon didn’t know what the red smear was, but as he watched, it began to move.

  The red glob spread out along the wall, melting from a sort-of circular blob into a long, thin, horizontal line. Then it trickled both up toward the ceiling and down toward the floor in thin, uneven streams.

  “It’s making letters,” Simon said aloud. “Look.”

  The stain was forming itself into words. They watched, mesmerized, as the red line morphed into a message on the wall:

  SUMMON MORGAINE.

  “Summon Morgaine?” Virgil asked, wrinkling up his face in confusion. “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea,” Simon muttered. He shifted his weight and cradled Abby so that her shoulders were in his lap as she blinked up toward the ceiling. “Abby? Are you awake?”

  Abby’s eyes searched the ceiling frantically, darting in every direction. They finally moved up and settled on Simon’s face, and the muscles in her jaw relaxe
d. “Simon,” she whispered again. “You’re here.”

  “I’m here, too,” Virgil pointed out.

  Simon brushed his fingers against Abby’s cheek. “Abby, what happened?” he asked again, trying to keep his voice even and gentle despite the panic that filled his chest and made his heart slam against his breastbone like a sledgehammer.

  Abby’s eyes rolled to the side, and she peered at the frozen statue of Llewyn through bleary, clouded eyes. “The poison…” she whispered, each word coming out thick and slow. “His heart…”

  “Morilan’s poison? It got to Llewyn’s heart?” Simon asked. Abby nodded slowly, and she winced from the pain. She closed her eyes, and she seemed to waver in and out of consciousness. Simon looked up at Virgil. “That must be why he’s frozen. Something in the dark magic.”

  “I don’t think so,” Virgil said, shaking his head. “Look at Abby’s hands.”

  Simon looked down and took one of Abby’s hands gently in his own, turning it over to inspect the palm. Her skin was speckled with deep black spots. Simon’s brow wrinkled in confusion and he looked back up at Virgil.

  “I think she drew out the poison,” Virgil said. “Or empathed it out, or whatever. Some of it, anyway. Enough to bring Llewyn back from the brink.”

  “He doesn’t look like he’s back from the brink,” Simon replied.

  “No, but he was back enough to get this out of the potion room.” Virgil reached down and picked up the empty glass vial from the floor. He read the label aloud: “Cryo-stasis.”

  Simon tilted his head. “He put himself into a cryogenic stasis? Why would he do that?”

  Virgil shrugged. “Maybe if he’s frozen, the poison is frozen, too, and it can’t move back into his heart.” The glass was as cold as ice. He dropped the vial and shook some warmth back into his hand.