Across the Great Barrier

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 knocked 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.

“The trouble is, the thing was gravid,” Professor Torgeson told Lan and Papa and me. She’d asked us and Professor Jeffries to dinner in order to talk about their findings — Papa, because he would be working on the changes to the settlement spells with them, and Lan and me because we’d been there and they thought we ought to know. They’d have asked Wash, too, but he was back out riding circuit already.

“It’s a good thing we got it when we did, then,” Lan said soberly.

Professor Jeffries nodded. “It was carrying nearly fifty eggs, ready to lay … and the preservation spell worked well enough and fast enough that I believe we could hatch at least some of them, under the right conditions.”

“Why would you want to?” I asked.

“It’s a totally new species,” Professor Jeffries said with a little frown. “Think of how much we could learn from live specimens!”

“Think of the trouble it would cause if someone irresponsible got hold of one of those eggs and hatched out a creature that can absorb more magic than the mirror bugs,” Papa said. “And do it faster than the bugs, and on this side of the Great Barrier Spell. Not to mention turning people and animals to stone.”

“Exactly,” Professor Torgeson said. “That’s why we’re keeping it a secret, for the time being.” She gave Lan and me a pointed look, and we nodded.

Professor Jeffries looked thoughtful. “Yes, but we’ve been intending to open a study crt west of the Mammoth River for some time. Getting live specimens through the Barrier Spell to this side is always a problem, and they generally don’t do as well here. This would be the perfect opportunity.”

“Perhaps,” Papa said. He looked at Professor Torgeson. “How much have you been able to determine from the carcass?”

“Not nearly as much as I’d like,” the professor replied. “It’s clearly not native to the area where we found it.”

“Thank goodness,” Papa murmured.

Professor Torgeson nodded and went on, “Its flesh has a magical affinity for certain kinds of rock, most of which aren’t present on the Western Plains. I’ve a request in for a geologist to assist in making more specific determinations. It appears to absorb magic via a special organ near the brain. Even dead, it is difficult to detect with magic — it resists what it cannot absorb.”

“You were extremely lucky,” Papa said to Lan and me. He looked back at Professor Torgeson, frowning. “How on earth are we to incorporate something like this in the settlement protection spells?”

“I have a few ideas,” Professor Jeffries said. “But we’re going to have to talk the college into that study crt. We must have a place where we can research these things, and test our spells before we try to adjust anything in the field.”

“What we really need is a research expedition,” Professor Torgeson said. “Everyone who’s gone out for the past thirty years except for McNeil has been exploring, not researching, and even so we still don’t have proper maps for the territories past Wintering Island. And I suspect our scaly visitor came from well beyond there.”

“What makes you think that, Professor?” Lan asked.

“The rock affinities I mentioned before,” Professor Torgeson replied. “But I need that geologist to confirm it for certain.”

Professor Torgeson got her geologist, and pretty near everything else she asked for. The settlements had been in an uproar since the news came out about the medusa lizard, and the Settlement Office was disposed to be cooperative. All of a sudden, Professor Torgeson didn’t have to try so hard to get them interested in hiring historical excavators to go out to Daybat Creek, and they brought in nearly a whole trainload of scientists and magicians to help study the dead lizard and all the petrified animals we’d brought back.

I spent more time working for Professor Torgeson than I did at the menagerie. The professor was too busy with the medusa lizard to worry about all the questions coming in, so I handled as many of them as I could. I sent off samples of the petrified animals we’d brought back from Daybat Creek to everyone who’d asked for them (though I made sure I sent Professor Lefevre his first), along with the summary of what the professors had figured out about the medusa lizard. The most interesting part, though, was looking up information for her when she had questions about settlement country. It kept me busy through the rest of July.

Early in August, Lan came and found me down at the creek. It was a Sunday afternoon and so hot that even the mosquitoes were drowsing instead of biting people. I’d gone down to the wide spot where there was a bit of a breeze and I could hike up my skirts and dangle my bare feet in the cool water as if I were a childing. He sat down beside me and pulled off his boots, and we sat in silence for a while.

“I’m not going back to Simon Magus this fall,” he said abruptly.

I just nodded. “Have you told Papa?”

“This morning.” Lan looked down and kicked at the water. “He isn’t too happy, but he’s not making a fuss. I think he understands that I need more time.”

“You’re not going to just mope around the house, are you?”

Lan shook his head. “I’m going out to the settlements for the rest of the summer,” he said.

“Circuit-riding?” I asked.

“Not by myself,” Lan said. “Sort of as an assistant.”

“Circuits finish up in October. What are you doing after that?”

“I think I might do some work for the Settlement Office. They have all these reports full of information that I don’t think anyone has ever looked at properly.”

“Anyone could do that kind of job.”

“Not anyone,” Lan objected. “It takes someone who can organize and think and —”

I poked him. “I meant, it doesn’t take a magician.”

“I know,” Lan said quietly. “That’s why I want to do it. I want to try not being a magician for a while.”

“Then why are you going to ride circuit? That does take a magician, and a pretty good one, too.”

Lan sighed and splashed the water again. “I want both. I want to do something real with all this magic I have, but …”

“So you’re trying it both ways,” I finished for him. “Working with your magic, and without it.” It seemed a strange way to think of it to me, but I’d never thought I wanted to do great magic, the way Lan always had.

Lan nodded. “For a year.”

I smiled and flopped back in the grass that covered the bank. “It’ll be good to have you home, even if it’s just for a year. Maybe you can get Wash to drop by more often.”

“Maybe.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Are you going to keep working for Professor Torgeson?”

“Probably,” I said. “At least as long as she has things for me to do. After that, I’ll go back to the menagerie for a while.”

“For a while?”

“I want to go back out to the settlements,” I said. “Not as a settler. Riding circuit would be nice, but I don’t think I have the magic for it. Something else.”

“You’ll have to invent it, whatever it is,” Lan said after thinking for a moment.

I smiled again, pleased that he was listening to what I wanted for a change. “Maybe I can work for the new settlements, surveying the plants and animals they have on their allotment to see if any of them are valuable.”

“Or maybe the professor will get her research expedition going and take you along.”

“That would be nice.”

Lan flopped back on the grass to join me, and we stared at the sky and splashed our feet in the creek water. “It looks like we’re both on our way,” Lan said after a minute.

“On our way where?”

“Wherever we’re going.” He swept his hand out in a grand gesture that took in the creek and Mill City and all the land beyond in either direction. “Even if we don’t know yet exactly where that is.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Starting is good. You can’t get anywhere at all if you never start.”

Beside me, I felt Lan nod. “Now all we have to do is keep going.”

“Keep going?” I smiled without taking my eyes from the endless blue sky. “I can do that.”