“But better too much than not enough,” interrupted Ceri, and gestured to Ivar to come stand opposite of Delia.
“Am I going to feel anything?” she asked, just a little apprehensively.
“Not a thing. You haven’t a spark of magic in you,” said Dole. “That’s why we want you here, we told you. You’re the rock that’s going to keep everything weighted down.”
She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to be compared to a rock, but—
At that moment, the entire room lit up as all the inherent diagrams and lines and most of all the twelve crystals and the two stone horns flared into life. It was so bright, in fact, that she had to shield her eyes for a moment.
When she could look again, she saw . . . absolutely nothing. From this side of the Gate, there was nothing whatsoever going on between the two arcs of stone.
But Ivar’s face reflected a rippling light, and she could see just a little bit of it in the reflections from his eyes and the metal bits of his armor and weapons.
“Go!” shouted Ponu.
Ivar and Bay walked confidently toward her.
And vanished from sight as they passed between the stone horns.
“Don’t move!” shouted all seven of the mages as she stirred a little, wanting to get up and see whatever it was they were seeing.
She froze.
Silence filled the cellar. Finally she broke it.
“Um—”
“You stay there until Ivar comes back, even if that takes until sunset,” said Ponu sternly, as Jonaton sagged down onto a stool. It appeared that he had done the brunt of the work. “I certainly hope it won’t take that long. The longer this thing stays open, the more likely it is someone in the Capital will sense something.”
“And if he’s not back by sunset, he’ll have to camp there,” added Dole.
“Does he know that?” she asked, alarmed now.
“Of course he knows that! Why do you think he was carrying that pack?” Koto snapped, speaking for the first time. “We’re not idiots! We gave him a thorough lecture!”
“Well, not complete idiots,” Sai snickered, earning himself a glare from the usually silent mage.
“Do you have something you can do?” Ponu asked. “A book you can read or something?”
“I—uh—”
“You didn’t give her a thorough briefing,” Sai pointed out. “You didn’t give her a briefing at all.”
“I thought that was your job,” Wis accused.
“Why should it be my job?” retorted Sai.
“Because you aren’t good for anything but talking and baking?” said Ceri.
Well, the resulting bickering that erupted was good for one thing, at least. It was entertaining. Entertaining for her, anyway.
It was just as the bickering was dying down that Jonaton sprang to life again, pointing at the (to her) empty space between the stone horns.
“He’s coming back!” he shouted.
Elation mixed with alarm erupted on all seven faces, and before she could ask what was going on, Bay suddenly appeared in a leap that carried him tumbling into Jonaton, knocking him to the ground. A moment later Ivar dashed into view as well, skidding to a halt on the floor of the chamber. The Circle burst into confused shouting, of which she could make nothing except extreme agitation.
So she did the only thing she could think of. She stood up and moved.
Light erupted from the crystals and the horn again, then blinked out, leaving her half blinded.
“Well . . . that worked,” said Jonaton, as she rubbed her dazzled eyes. “Good job, Delia.”
“Why were you running?” “Was it a bear?” “Was it wyrsa?” “Was—”
“I was running,” panted Ivar, “because the seven of you pounded it into my thick head quite thoroughly that as soon as I found a body of water that suited us, I needed to get back here as quickly as possible to avoid alerting the mages in the Capital. So I did.”
Silence.
“Ah,” said Jonaton, finally. “Uh, well done.”
“I want it known right now that I do not much care for that Gate you built,” Ivar said crossly. “It wasn’t like any Gate I have ever used before. It felt as if something was stretching and pulling me like taffy, and there were entirely too many things in the darkness between here and there that fancied a nice piece of taffy.”
“Really?” Koto stood up and came to stand over the kneeling Ivar. “Can you—”
“Later, Koto,” Jonaton cautioned. “We’ll go over all of this later. Right now—you said you’d found what we need?”
Ivar began laughing, in between panting for breath. “Good gods, I could smell it, it was so close! More to the point, so could Bay, and it was his nose I was counting on. When I got to the other side—this Gate dumped me out in the middle of a lot of trees, facing west.”
“That’s good, because that’s what I was going for,” Jonaton said with satisfaction.
“Well, I could smell water, and I told Bay to find it. We hacked our way through some brush, got to the other side of the trees, and found ourselves above a sort of bowl, a flattened, round valley. Most of the valley was filled with a lake in the shape of a crescent. A big lake, bigger than anything in this Duchy, for sure.”
“This sounds promising. Go on,” murmured Koto.
“Oh, but it gets so, so much better.” Ivar grinned, as if he had a huge secret he was just about to reveal. “You know this thing you gave me?” He opened his hand, which had been held in a fist around something, showing that he was holding a sort of black stone disk. “This thing you said would show me where that magic you thought you sensed was? Well, it led me down to that lake. And—”
He snatched up a piece of chalk from where Ponu had discarded it and sketched a crescent shape.
Then he stabbed the chalk right in the middle of the crescent, on the very shore of what presumably was the lake. “It led me right there. There were stonework ruins, some a couple of stories tall. Hundreds of years old, looked like, and no people had been anywhere around for just as long, too, I’d wager. There were the remains of a tower, overgrown by generations of trees. Hardwoods. The brush we hacked through was probably streets, once, and when we got waterside, there was a jetty. Birds and bugs were everywhere, there were watergrasses and algae, and it looked like fish were striking.” He laughed again. “We ventured onto the jetty, mindful of snakes, and when we looked back the way we’d come, there were more ruins, and what looked like a charcoal dome. A little north of there, we could see another jetty, more intact than what we stood on. It was a dock. Straight as a bolt. Overgrown like everything else, and there was a line of pilings on either side of it. I think they were moorings or slips, once. The dock ended in a tee, probably ten horselengths long.” Ivar marked it on his crude map. “You can clear it, clean it up, and build your Gate right there. It’ll dump barges right into the water. And there was more. There were sunken boats by the shore, prows sticking up above the waterline. Looked like they’d rotted out from below, but what was above water still had flecks of paint. Still had their ribs, too. Must have been made from that local hardwood.”