Darien stepped out, then back in, then out. “Yeah, seems to work.”
Silas opened his mouth to say he hadn’t meant Darien should be the one to test that, but there’d been no harm done, and he’d just sound stupid coming out with a warning now. “Right. Jasper, next move? Do you want to try to build a new portal immediately? Kii, can you find your route home?”
Kii lifted up into the sky, soaring in circles higher and higher, then dropped in a fast swoop to land on the ground in front of them. “I can find Home, yes. Could go now. And we’d better decide fast because someone’s coming.”
“Someone?” Jasper asked. “People live here?”
“Depends on how you define ‘people,’” Kii said.
Before she could elaborate, they all saw a figure running toward them through the grass. Silas glanced around, wondering if they should retreat into the portal, but it looked like just one man, against the four of them. “Shields up,” he ordered.
They all complied, although Silas noted that it took more effort than usual to pull his shields out of his core. Not impossible, but work, where it’d been instinctive for the last fifteen years. They all turned, shoulder to shoulder, watching the stranger approach. As he got near, Silas realized stranger was a more apt term than he expected.
The tall, two-legged— person— panted toward them, open mouth revealing a set of very sharp teeth in a long, green jaw. Its tongue flicked across thin lips and it gasped hoarsely, “Humans. Wait. No go!”
A sizzling bolt of energy from Magda drilled into the ground at the creature’s feet and it staggered to a sudden halt, but didn’t flinch back.
Grim took two steps toward it. “A lone Yyygrdiil! What are you doing here?”
The tall— way too tall, six-foot-eight? Six-ten?— person looked down at Grim and its clawed hands flew up in the air. “Small friend!” It followed that with a run of liquid trills more like bird calls than speech.
Grim said, “Yes, of course we’ll help. Explain the problem. And perhaps in English, if you speak enough of it.”
The being chomped its mouth a couple of times, then said, “I speak many English. I learn from Coldweel and Norlee. They send you?”
Silas exchanged a glance with Jasper. Coldwell, if you were still alive, I would roast you on a spit. Slowly. “No,” he said. “They’ve both passed away. Died. But they left the portal.” He gestured toward the dark space hovering behind them.
“Yes. Portal. I build with them.”
Jasper said, “No wonder I didn’t recognize some of the runes.”
“It was— I came—” The being coughed shrilly, then bent to Grim and let loose with a huge rush of trilling and fluting and clicks.
Grim listened intently. Pip cocked his head and said, “That sounds awful!”
Darien stared down at his familiar. “You know what he’s saying?”
Kii said, “One of our gifts as familiars is languages, a spell we learn to understand others’ speech. Without it, a familiar would have to spend a long time just learning to communicate with their new sorcerer.”
Pip said, “The Yyygrdiil also summon familiars, so the spell works for their speech too.”
“Ah.” Clearly Silas knew a lot less than he’d imagined he did. And Coldwell hadn’t been the only one keeping secrets. Silas debated glaring at Grim, but there wasn’t much point in being petty now.
The spill of language from the alien’s mouth went on and on, with occasional interjections from Grim that sounded the same. Eventually Grim said, “All right. I get the picture.” He turned to Silas. “Lyyll— that’s her call-name— is a magic practitioner, something like Jasper, working on new spells for her clan. She managed to create a portal, and being a rather reckless sort—” Grim coughed and gave Jasper a side-eye— “she decided to go through and see what was on the other side. She landed on Earth, and the portal failed to stay open behind her. The exact location isn’t clear, but she ended up running away from several men with guns. Farmers or hunters or soldiers, some such. She was wounded and collapsed in the middle of Norlington’s maze, where she’d hoped to hide. Norlington and Coldwell found her there.”
“When was this?” Silas asked.
“She’s not sure. But it was after Norlington’s familiar died, and before you became Coldwell’s apprentice, since neither of you were around, so I’d guess perhaps twenty years back, maybe a little more.”
“Twenty years!” Darien’s eyes widened. “Has she been here all that time? This isn’t her home world, is it?”
“Yes. And no.” Grim’s whiskers flattened. “As near as I can tell, our two sorcerers took her into the mansion and imprisoned her in the cellar while they tried to figure out what she was. That would’ve been wartime, and secrets and demons were part of the landscape. She had no demonic aura, but they didn’t trust her. Fools. If they’d only thought to consult a familiar.” Grim’s tone held a low growl.
Silas shook his head. Norlington had lost his familiar in the thirties. As far as Silas knew, Coldwell had never had one. Consulting another sorcerer’s familiar would’ve meant sharing their exciting new discovery with the other sorcerer. He could imagine the old men unwilling to do that.
Lyyll trilled another phrase.
Grim laughed thinly. “She says she understands their caution. The Yyygrdiil are a very logical species and don’t hold grudges. In any case, they taught her some English, and were fascinated with her magic and her report of portal travel. She was eager by then to get back home to her clan, and they were eager to see how a portal worked, but they didn’t want her to open a gate to an alien invasion.”
“They wouldn’t,” Pip protested. “The Yyygrdiil don’t fight wars like that. They do single combat, occasionally—”
“But that’s how human brains work,” Grim said. “They made a bargain with her. They’d try opening a gate to a neutral location, somewhere safe, to demonstrate the technique. And then she could head on home from there.”
Silas glanced around. The world they were on looked safe enough, but here she still was. “What went wrong?”
Lyyll said, “Not enough magic. Not strong enough.”
Grim nodded. “They found this world, but when she tried to build her return gate, the low level of power in this place kept her from opening it and getting through.”
“And she’s been stuck here?” Pip’s eyes widened.
“Oh, worse than that,” Grim said. “She went back to the mansion, because that portal was still open. She asked to change its target to her own world. Now that she’d shown good faith. The old men disagreed. And she—”
“Angry,” Lyyll said. “I am big and they scared. I should have seen risk.”
“You had a right,” Grim told her, “to expect better from those two old men.” He looked back at Silas. “She got angry, and to be fair, she’s imposing. But they didn’t give her a chance to settle down. They hit her with a paralysis spell they’d held ready for dealing with a ‘dangerous alien’ and knocked her down. They dragged her back through the portal on an improvised cart— and I get a small satisfaction out of imagining how much work that must’ve been— and dumped her here and set the portal to forbid her entry. Then they went back and obviously bricked up the room and left her stuck here.”