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  Jake needed something to do. He wanted to run, and Lauren put him to work gathering sticks and twigs out of the castle's line of sight. This wasn't entirely busywork—the air had not lost its bitter winter bite, and Lauren thought a fire would feel good. Having Jake gathering firewood was only twice as much work as doing it herself, because he would lose interest for a few minutes and have to be shown where he left his sticks so that he could go back and pick them up. But at least he was focused on her, and not on the half sphere of light that shimmered around him like a grounded bubble, or on the scene closer to the castle, where the Sentinels looked like they were setting off fireworks. Lauren's skin tingled from the flow of magic that coursed through the area.

  "Wish I knew what they were doing," Pete said when he saw where she was looking.

  She nodded. "Wish I could help."

  Pete snorted. "If I were you, I'd wish I could blow them all to kingdom come."

  "That too."

  Outside Cold Starhold

  With shields cast around Jake and the gates, and with Lauren and Pete acting as backup, Eric and the Sentinels got to work tracking down the spell that plagued Earth.

  "We're working without shields this time, y'all," Eric said. "Watch your backs. Pete and Lauren have weapons and will do what they can to cover us, but we're going to be wide-open to any spells cast our way. Keep a protective buffer for yourself ready."

  Nancine held out her watch and said "Clock," and the glowing time readouts appeared in the air in front of each Sentinel. Timing would be less critical for this operation, because the Sentinels couldn't leave; when they'd unraveled the spell, they still had to deal with the three traitors who had cast it. Still, the quicker and cleaner they kept their operation, the less unwelcome attention they would be likely to draw and the better off they would be.

  Ernest rested a hand on his tripod and said, "Light feet." Eric could feel the magic being channeled into Ernest's funnel and kept under tight control, and he breathed a little easier. As long as Ernest could keep their work tightly funneled, they should avoid making the situation worse.

  With their timer running and the magic carefully channeled, George Mercer set his slide rule spinning in midair. He would take over in Debora's specialty, setting perimeter guards. It wasn't what he did best, and it wasn't what he liked, but the full circle had lost a lot of people. He would do what he had to do. "Set watchdogs, circle times two."

  Little sparkles erupted around the perimeter of their work area. Even if they couldn't be shielded, they would have advance warning of anything coming at them. George's "watchdogs" spun and zipped like fireflies on speed, racing each other around the work circle, zipping out to about twenty yards in every direction and swarming back in—very pretty, a bit gaudy—not as elegant, as unobtrusive or as carefully conservative of magical energy as Debora's would have been. But they would do the job.

  Terry Mayhew stepped to the center of the circle beside June Bug and held the tiny mirror on his key chain in the palm of one hand. It grew to the size of a saucer, and as he traced his finger across its surface, green fire shimmered in its depths. Terry had studied tracking with June Bug, and he would work with her to try to locate the source of the plague that was wiping out the Earth's population.

  He looked at June Bug, and she held out her right hand. He took it with his left. They stared into the surfaces of their own mirrors, and June Bug said, "Show the source of the rebound plague."

  Mayhem waited for a moment to let her spell clear, then said, "Draw path, disease vector."

  The Sentinels' circle waited, holding its breath. When they had tried this before, Lauren's massive redecorating spells had completely overshadowed any tracks Willie, Deever, and Tom might have left behind. This time, the Sentinels were as close to their targets as they dared get, they were pointed in the direction of the enemy, and they'd canceled or blocked magical sources from other directions.

  They should be able to get a read, Eric thought. Even if the spellcaster had put a heavy shield over the spell that was causing the problem, they should still get a direction, an indication of the source, and from both of those, an idea of what they could do to counter the problem.

  Eric wanted to see something good happen—he had to fight his natural impulses to keep from willing something good to happen. That would just cast another spell, and screw things up. He tried to think of nothing but the integrity of the shields he'd cast around Jake and the gates, and the backup shield he kept on ready for himself, and the steady movement of air in and out of his lungs. That was the hardest part of doing magic as a team—keeping metaphorical fingers out of somebody else's part of the spell. All of them struggled with it. Sometimes someone, too eager for results, slipped.

  But this time everyone held. They all apparently kept their urgent desire for results in check by remembering how dire the fallout would be if they screwed up. They didn't screw up, and finally, Mayhem said, "I've got a mouse here," at the same time that June Bug blurted out, "I have a complete spiderweb of trails, and all of them link to other trails, and then most of them die off to nothing."

  "A mouse?" Eric asked, looking from Sentinel to Sentinel. "A mouse? What does a mouse have to do with the end of the world?"

  Inside Cold Starhold

  "They're out there," Willie said. He leaned against the parapet and pointed down at the river.

  Tom and Deever both looked. "Don't see them," Tom said.

  "Look for a tiny 'divert attention' spell attached to the area straight ahead and down. Then look for a couple of small shields back of it, that it's been anchored to."

  Tom wove a little spell in the air, and suddenly held a tiny circle of clear glass. He angled the glass in the direction Willie had been pointing, and suddenly two brilliant green bubbles appeared: one fixed, one moving. He looked for the "divert" spell Willie had mentioned, and when he finally got through it, noticed the semicircle of Sentinels pointed toward the castle, shieldless. Easy targets. "They must have gotten reinforcements."

  "They came directly here—not overland. Which means they have a gateweaver," Willie said. "So, yes, they've brought reinforcements. And that means we have a problem."

  He paced along the parapet. He didn't look much like the old Willie Locklear anymore. For one thing, he appeared to be no more than thirty. For another, the etching of constant pain that had deepened the lines on his face for the last two years was completely gone. When he finally made his break with Earth and the Sentinels permanent, he erased the cancer he'd been secretly fighting; he'd felt the awful gnawing that had eaten halfway through his spine and deep into his liver and his bones just melt away, and he had rejoiced. And in the same breath, had cursed the Sentinels for refusing to let their own take advantage of the wondrous powers that they controlled. He would never have been permitted to use magic to eliminate his cancer; nor would the Sentinels ever have allowed him to reclaim lost youth. Those were, in their eyes, unnecessary and deadly expenditures of magic, and, timid creatures that they were, they dreaded the slightest divergence from their narrow, chaste path.

  "We could attack them," Deever said.

  "Could. But I don't think we should. They're not after us right this second, though they surely will come after us sooner or later. They're trying to track down the spell that's killing Earth. They'll have their hands full trying to deal with that; they won't have anything left over for us for quite some time."

  "Then now would be the perfect time to hit them," Tom said.

  Willie turned and studied his protégé with narrowed eyes. "You think so?"

  "Of course. While they're completely focused on something else—"

  "They're trying to save your world, you ass. They're trying to save the lives of all the people you've ever known. You're going to interrupt them in the middle of that?"

  "What do we care? We aren't ever going back," Tom said.

  Deever shook his head and turned away, disgusted. Willie said, "Did you mean anything you said when
you took the Sentinel oath?"

  "Of course. But I'm not a Sentinel anymore." Tom didn't seem to see that he'd suggested anything wrong.

  "The values you hold as a Sentinel don't go away when you cease being a Sentinel," Willie said. "If your world and your people ever mattered to you, they still do."

  "And that's the reason you sold your friends and colleagues to an Orian? That's the reason you broke every rule in the Sentinel book about contact with natives, about the use of magic for personal gain, about making yourself one of the gods, for the love of Jesus…" Tom looked from Willie to Deever. "And you, Deever, have a lot of room to talk—turning yourself into a golden-haired Greek god and planning on sneaking back to Earth while there's still something left to pick up women for your harem. I'm not the one who decided I needed a wang like a flagpole, am I, or a whole bunch of new hair, or muscles on top of my muscles? I haven't done a single spell for myself. But you two are sure enough quick off the mark to tell me what a bad boy I am."

  Willie had the good grace to flush. Deever just scowled and kept staring at a fixed point at the far corner of the tower on which they stood.

  Willie finally noticed where he was looking. "What do you see, Deever?"

  "A mouse."

  "Dead?"

  "Looks real damned alive to me." He pointed, and both Willie and Tom looked where he was pointing. "I thought we got rid of all the mice."

  "Might be the last one," Tom said. "If it is, it could live a long time. I set the spell so that each mouse would only die after it had infected at least one other mouse, so if it's the last one, we ought to catch it and throw it over the side."

  "You limit that spell?" Deever asked.

  "Limited it to mice."

  Deever considered that, then shrugged. "That ought to be good enough." He took a deep breath and returned his attention to the encampment of Sentinels below the castle. "So what are we going to do about them?"

  CHAPTER 18

  Copper House

  MOLLY SAT CROSS-LEGGED on a stone bench in the center of one of Copper House's many gardens, with Yaner twitching and squirming on the seat beside her.

  The tips of her middle fingers rested against the pads of her thumbs firmly enough that she could feel her own pulse beating steadily; she matched her breathing to her pulse. Breathe in for six heartbeats, hold for six heartbeats, breathe out for six heartbeats, and hold again for six more. She concentrated on slowing her heart rate, on driving her breathing deeper and deeper into her belly, on erasing everything but the calm, cool center that she had first found in the Air Force M-16 training. The staff sergeant watching her shoot told her that if she controlled her breathing, she would be able to keep her pattern tighter. He'd been right—when she controlled her breathing, everything about her relaxed and steadied and she seemed to move into a universe that only she inhabited—a place where she and she alone made things happen.

  She needed that control now. Seolar had stayed behind at her request, but she could still feel his panic at her departure. He was certain his people were going to die out, and he was terrified that he would lose her.

  But the Sentinels could not come to Copper House as a rescue force. The veyâr would die trying to save her, and they couldn't hope to survive against Sentinels who commanded the powers of gods. She would not let them die for her.

  She wanted—needed—to meet Lauren, too. The compulsion was as strong as the one that had driven her to find out who her family was, as the compulsion that had finally pulled her back to Cat Creek to live. She had to do it. And she had to do it immediately.

  Which meant she had to figure out magic, and do it well enough on her first try that she could transport Yaner and herself to the place where Lauren and the Sentinels prepared for their battle.

  Aim high, she thought, smiling just a little. And, with her eyes closed, she stared at the spot inside the center of her forehead, counted her breathing, and willed herself to go with Yaner to the place where her sister was.

  She seemed, after a time, to grow lighter, to slide away from the reality of her body. She seemed to become a creature less than flesh, yet more than spirit. She became aware of the energy that flowed through her, energy that came from the movement of the world, from the radiance of the sun, from the pulsing of distant stars. All of that energy was hers if she chose to use it. She could fly with it. She could move mountains and redirect rivers and summon storms with it. All she had to do was…

  …was…

  …all she had to do was…

  …want it.

  Yes.

  I want to take Yaner with me to join my sister Lauren, she thought. But she did not just think it. She willed it, creating the image in her mind and feeding the image with the music of the stars and the fire of the sun and the slow, solid force of the dark, cool earth. I will go there.

  She settled into her body again, and it felt the same as it always had to her—solid and firm and real. But when she opened her eyes, she no longer sat on the stone bench. She rocketed through the air, surrounded by a blaze of palest, sparkling light—and beside her Yaner floated, rolled into a fetal ball with his arms wrapped tightly over his face. He mewled like a new-born kitten.

  "Oh, my," she whispered.

  The force of her own will, of her own desire to shape her existence, had become a solid, immediate tool. Beneath her, trees and hills and rivers rolled away like an undulating carpet of brown and black and white. She had a sense of movement faster than anything she'd ever experienced in her life, including the incentive flight in the F-16 when she was working engines at Moody. But she heard nothing from outside the sphere of light, felt no breeze, smelled nothing. The light sealed her off from the outside world as effectively as any cockpit.

  "You have to open your eyes," she told Yaner.

  "We're going to die," he squeaked, not moving a muscle.

  "You have to let me know if we're going in the right direction."

  "I thought you were going to make us a gate and we'd just step through it! You made us fly, and we're going to smash on the rocks or end up skewered on the branches of trees, or the Old Gods will blast us from the sky for our impertinence."

  "We're not going to die. We're doing great. I just need to know if we're going in the right direction."

  Yaner moved one arm fractionally—one eye peered at her from beneath its shield. "You promise?"

  "Promise what?"

  "That we won't die."

  "We aren't going to die. At least not from this. When we get where we're going, I'll land us. No problem."

  Yaner shuddered but pulled his arms away from his face and unrolled. He looked down at the ground racing beneath them, mewled again, and closed his eyes tightly. "We're going in the right direction. You'll see a large black-stone fortress ahead of you soon. That's Blackleg House, where the traitors went and where the Sentinels plan to go. I don't know if your sister is there yet or not, but we're at least going where she will soon be."

  "That's all I needed to know," Molly said.

  "Good." Yaner rolled himself back into his little ball and covered his eyes again. "Let me know when it's over."

  Outside Cold Starhold

  "Oh, no," Lauren said, and pointed to a huge bubble of light that raced toward them just above the tree line. "Look."

  "I see it," Pete said.

  Lauren looked frantically for better cover for Jake, but she had her choice of clearing—in clear view of the castle; forest edge—where the gates sat and where they currently waited; and deep forest—where she wouldn't be able to keep an eye on Jake or the Sentinels. "Screw it," she muttered, and created a little tent around the mirrors and the gates, a replica of the Blue's Clues tent Jake had in the playroom, with bright blue puppy-head door, paw-print décor, and appliquéd picture of the show's host in his green-striped shirt. Only bigger. A lot bigger. Big enough to serve as cover for more than Jake if necessary. If she got in trouble for the magic use, she got in trouble. Her little boy was her first pr
iority.

  "Jake. Into the tent, puppy-boy. Quick. Run." Jake laughed when his plaything appeared, and raced toward it as fast as his short legs would take him, liking this game and its urgency. He squealed as he ran—that happy squeal that Lauren usually loved to hear. This time she shivered, not from the cold. Trusting—he was so trusting, so incapable of imagining the nightmares that life could pour on him in an instant.

  She swung her Oria-rifle to ready and switched off the safety. To Pete, who also had his weapon ready, she said, "He told you these things would stun or kill, depending on what you wanted them to do, right?"

  Pete nodded. He was watching the bubble getting closer and bigger at an alarming rate. "Yep."

  "Do we shoot?"

  "Stun," he said with a nod. "No damage from a stun."

  They both fired together, and flung themselves out of the way of the shots, which ricocheted off the shield that surrounded the oncoming bubble and bounded back at them. Pete got away unscathed. Lauren took a hit in her right leg, and discovered two things. One, she couldn't get back up, and two, those stun shots might not do any permanent damage, but they hurt like hell. She lay there with her eyes watering from pain, gripping her leg, fighting back a howl because she didn't want Jake to be scared.