Silas sat motionless except for the faint rise and fall of his chest, and a flutter of his closed eyelids now and then. Exactly the way he had for the last hour. And the two hours before that. His hands lay limp in his lap, and his face looked odd, wiped clean of the sharp intelligence that usually animated it. Darien didn’t like that one bit.
Grim said, “I imagine it took time for Coldwell to explain the gate, and perhaps it’s taking time for Silas to find the memory.”
“If it exists at all.”
“You’d better hope it does, young sorcerer.”
Hell, yeah, I do. He sat beside Silas, almost close enough for their knees to touch. The floor was hard. Silas’s ass must be going to sleep. The irrelevant thought was better than his relevant ones. What if he never wakes up? “The potion has to wear off sometime, right?”
“Presumably.” A minute twitch of Grim’s ear shouldn’t have conveyed doubt, but Darien was suddenly afraid.
“What if it doesn’t?”
Jasper said, “I’ve done some guided meditation using ginseng and valerian. Trying to sharpen my focus.”
Like Jasper’s focus needs sharpening. Darien nodded. “How long did it last?”
“A few hours at most. Although I took moderate doses, and everyone’s metabolism is different.”
Darien looked over his shoulder to ask Grim, “Can I touch him? Will it help? Hurt? I don’t want to wake him up wrong and mess this up.”
“I don’t have a rule book, boy.” Grim gave his fur a fast lick, while staying pressed supportively against Silas’s back.
The idea that Grim was equally unsure made Darien queasy.
Pip came over and eyed Grim with an odd intentness. “When you asked Granny Abels for the potion, you said she’d made it for Silas and Darien.”
Grim blinked slowly three times. “So I did.”
“So what if Darien needs to take it too? And bring Silas back. You said once that Silas would go into a hell to fetch Darien home. What if it’s something like that?”
“Silas isn’t in a hell,” Grim snapped, but added more slowly, “However, perhaps he does need guiding home. Perhaps you’re on to something there, pup.”
“I’ll do it. Anything.” Darien reached for the flask.
“Whoa.” Magda grabbed his wrist. “Stop and think a minute. What if it just knocks you out cold too? And then Silas comes around and we’re ready to go, and you’re unconscious?”
“You can just carry me through,” he retorted. “Between the three of you. I’m not that heavy, and I’m not the one needed for the spell.”
“But he might need your power. Or for you to channel all of our power.”
Might. Could. Maybe. Darien hated uncertainty. He couldn’t help feeling that the increasing blankness of Silas’s face meant something was wrong. Silas’s expressions were subtle, but always there, animated, changing, twitching the corner of a lip, forming the little creases by his eyes. Not this department store mannequin smoothness. “I’m going to do it. If we don’t get Silas back…” He didn’t have to tell her they’d be stranded here, surviving only for however long they could find food, while demons rose again on Earth.
He lifted the flask to his lips.
“Wait!” Jasper knelt beside him. “If you’re doing this, you should be touching him, I think. And I want to do runes for you, anything that might help guide you.”
Darien licked his dry lips. “I’m not turning down any kind of help.”
“Lie down,” Jasper suggested. “Silas too. And take his hand.”
The floor would be no softer lying down, but it couldn’t hurt to get Silas safely on his back. Silas’s muscles seemed stiff, but by going slowly, they were able to ease him flat. Grim stood over his necromancer, whuffling at his face for a few moments, then stepped back. “Go then, with my best wishes. Seek him and bring him back.”
“I have the chalk.” Jasper pulled out a familiar blue stick. “There are runes the healers use, to go inside a patient’s mind and body to heal them. I’m no healer, but perhaps they’ll help.”
Darien lay down and let his shoulder touch Silas’s, groping for Silas’s hand. The limp, unresponsive fingers against his were wrong, wrong, wrong. “Do it.”
Listening to the familiar whisper and squeak of chalk on floor, Darien closed his eyes and tried to center himself the way Silas had taught him, back when finding his magic was a bizarre effort. These days, he sank easily into the gold light at his core, his magic winding around him, practically purring like a large cat eager to be used. A bit of a moth-eaten cat right now, he thought, thinner and more ragged than he was used to. He stroked some of the strands together, coaxing it into shape—
“Ready now.”
He jolted at Jasper’s touch on his shoulder.
“Drink the potion, lie back down, and imagine merging with Silas, sliding into him.” Magda’s muffled snort made Darien open his eyes to meet Jasper’s rueful ones. Jasper said, “Sorry, could’ve phrased that better.”
I’d love to be sliding into Silas, in our own bed, on our own world. “I get the picture.” Darien raised his shoulders, lifted the flask, and took a long swallow, then another. The potion felt dense sliding down his throat, sharp as wine but with a mellowness of honey in its wake. Slowly a burn built inside him that was deep burgundy and sank into his power. Dizzy and light-headed, he lay back down, set the flask aside, and squeezed Silas’s hand hard. “Do it.”
A framework of faint irregular blue grew around them. He couldn’t tell if the wispiness was Jasper at the limits of his strength or the fact that the magic wasn’t a good fit for him. Pushing threads of the dense burgundy power into the spaces firmed things up, and Darien closed his eyes, the magic still visible against the backs of his eyelids.
There. And there. Paths framed by blue runes opened slowly in the surrounding dark, filled with gray mist much like the Veil, thinning and swirling. Which way? He couldn’t see Silas, just the blue arches that hovered in his peripheral vision, moving whenever he tried to look closely.
“Silas?” He wondered if he’d said that out loud. The name echoed in his head. “Silas?” Areas of the rune structure darkened, others brightened. He couldn’t see well enough lying down, so he sat up, then stood. All around him, the soft muffling dark pressed in. Where Silas’s body should’ve been at his feet, there was only empty space. Not real then. Or at least, differently real.
He turned in a slow circle. The runes around him stabilized until he could make out find and heal, reach and mind. Other unfamiliar ones wove through them, frustrating him with their almost-meaning. He’d have to go back to really studying his runes… once the demons were under control. “Silas?”
An area to his left brightened, and the mist in the rune-framework thinned there as if a tunnel had opened behind it. All right, then.
He wasn’t sure if he was walking or drifting along. The brighter arch approached, and he passed through it into the mist without a sound. If he was walking, the surface underfoot absorbed every impact. The fog closed around him, thick and muffling, without the wispy power trails of the Veil. Time passed, and only a vague sense that he was heading toward a goal kept him from panicking in the formless, senseless, lightless space. Then, up ahead, he made out a more defined shape.