“Now the Veil.” Silas bent to write out his runes formally, a measure he didn’t often bother with anymore. Done, he put the chalk carefully in his pocket, stared at his spell, and pushed his power into it. “Resisting me,” he muttered. “Might take a minute.”
Darien released a trickle of power to Silas, easing into his spell, trying to be helpful, and felt Silas catch his magic, refine it, guide it where he needed more strength. He could feel the way space resisted Silas, like a wall where it usually was a curtain. He added a bit more power. The wall of space rippled, thinned, parted a crack. Yes, there. In Silas’s sudden relief, Darien could sense the Veil behind the opening they were forcing.
Silas tugged on Darien’s thread, and he let more magic flow. Sure. Take what you need. The barrier thinned further, and the Veil appeared above Silas’s runes, a curtain of drifting mist, widening and thickening. Silas said, “It’s open. Come now. Maybe hold hands, so no one gets lost.” He reached back to grasp Darien’s hand and took a step forward, green light beginning to pool and glow around his free fingers. His palm pressed damp against Darien’s, but his grip was strong. Darien held his other hand back, and Jasper took it and reached in turn for one of Xsing’s hands, which the professor made longer and thinner, to keep Jasper from having to bend.
No one is ever going to believe this.
Slowly, step by step, they moved forward and the mists closed around them. Darien didn’t look back to see his body where he’d left it, but he heard Lyyll, following Xsing, muse, “I’m here but not really here. My body is back there. How incredibly odd.”
“This is different from a portal gate,” Xsing said. “I will have so many questions—”
“Later.” Silas raised his head. “Where do you want to start your search? There’s land that way.” He lit a finger with brighter green flame and pointed forward.
“No,” Xsing said slowly. “If the space between worlds is the Veil, then we don’t want to leave it for the shore.”
“We can’t stay in this miasma,” Silas protested.
“I think we must.”
“It’s like wading in pea soup,” Darien said. “Or magical kelp soup.” A tendril of sparking gold floated near his face and he flinched. Silas’s steady grasp was a welcome anchor.
“Nonetheless.” Xsing released his grip on Jasper and stepped forward to wave all three hands in the air. “If we are to find the channels of the world gates crossing the matrix, this is where they will be.”
“You understand the science better than I.” Silas tightened his hold on Darien. “What shall we do?”
“My turn for spellwork.” Xsing raised his hands and a faint red outlined them.
Then nothing else happened. Time ticked by, as far as Darien could tell in the Veil. At least, his heart beat on, and Pip twitched and sighed and shuffled against his calf. Jasper and Lyyll began a low-voiced conversation that the Veil muffled out of recognition, though they were only a few feet away. Silas’s light kept a pocket of steady brightness around them. Xsing stood with his hands raised.
Pip asked in a stage-whisper, “Should we be helping him?”
Darien said, “Xsing, would you like to have me add some power—”
“No. Wait. I almost have it.” Xsing’s hands moved at last, coming together, undulating, pointing. “There. That way. A lot of power.”
“Let’s go!” Pip yipped.
“Wait, pup.” Grim rose on his haunches. “Are we sure it’s a gate and not a demon?”
Xsing said, “It’s a spell, not an entity. An unfamiliar spell.”
“Good enough for me. Come on.” Darien tugged against Silas’s hand, eager to be doing something. “Let’s check it out.”
“I will lead the way.” Xsing set off into the mists, and Darien hurried to stay behind him. Silas strode at Darien’s side, with Jasper and Lyyll close on their heels, Jasper’s hand still linked to Darien’s. Holding hands was awkward, but Darien couldn’t bring himself to let go. Deliberately staying in the Veil was the opposite of anything he’d done with Silas, and it felt wrong in some undefinable way. As though at any moment they might suffocate, or fall, or drown in this void of space.
They moved on for minutes, or maybe an hour. Darien tried to count his steps but kept losing track. Suddenly, Xsing stopped short, forcing Jasper to tread on Darien’s heel. Silas took one more step to move up alongside Xsing. “What? Is it nearby?”
“Yes.” Xsing swiveled an eye to look at Silas. “Can you feel it?”
Silas focused, and Darien copied him, letting his Othersight open and expand. He’d lost the River long ago and wondered if Silas could still find it. Overlying the muffling cotton of the Veil, Darien sensed a deep, throbbing hum of… something. Power. “I feel magic. Localized.”
Silas raised his free hand, liquid green sliding over his skin, reaching toward the gray, swirling mists around them. “There?”
“Yes.” Xsing set off faster, forcing the humans and Lyyll to break into a jog despite Xsing’s shorter legs.
The mist ahead of them brightened slowly, and a shape began to form, pale and shining, a rope across their path, a cable, a fat sewer-pipe. Xsing slowed as he neared it. The structure vibrated slowly, occasionally sucking a tiny wisp of power out of the mists if one drifted by. The light became bright enough that Silas let his green shine go out.
“We’re going to cut that.” Darien stepped forward and released Silas’s hand. “Magically.”
“That’s the plan.” Silas’s tone sounded dry. “And with containment.”
Somehow. Without solid ground to draw their runes on. They’d been walking on something, but the surface beneath their feet seemed unreal, a smoother, firmer mist that carried their weight. Darien didn’t like to think about that part too hard, for fear that disbelief might make the support go away and let him fall forever.
Jasper moved up next to him, head tilted, gesturing with both hands as if outlining something. “Perhaps five feet in diameter. That’ll take a big construct. But in theory, it should be possible.”
“In theory, I think we’re pulling plans out of our ass,” Grim muttered. “But I have no better ideas.”
A thin shimmering strand, orange-red, floated near the shining cable and was sucked into its surface. “Is it feeding off the Veil?” Silas asked.
“Appears to be,” Xsing said. “It’s not clear if that’s deliberate or a side effect of being a big power-sink.”
Silas cleared his throat. “It might explain how the structures can stay stable without sucking their creators dry. The Veil holds an incalculable amount of power, distributed over an unimaginable space. I’ve always been careful to leave it alone, as I venture through. But if someone learned how to tap it…”
Jasper said eagerly, “What potential that would have!”
“We don’t have a lot of time to waste in here, though.” Darien looked back at Silas. “And five more gates to find.”
“Right.”
“Can you tell if this is a gate to a Hell or the Greenworld gate?” Darien asked Xsing. “We hoped to leave the Greenworld one standing.”