Ellie looked dizzy.“You mean… someone might’ve written a book about it?”
Adam laughed.“Hell, I don’t know, Princess.Maybe?Or maybe they’re still out there working on it.I just can’t think how you’d be the only one.”
Ellie paced along the path.Adam could practically see her mind whirling.“But why do some people have these abilities and not others?Are they always there, or do they pop up somewhere along the way during one’s lifetime?Of course, there must be a difference between how someone like Jacobs or Neil came to do what they do, and me, with it all starting from touching the Smoking Mirror… and whataboutthe mirror?How does a power like that come to exist?How on earth does onemanufacturea flaming sword?Where did all these arcanacomefrom?”
“I can’t even begin to tell you.”Adam repressed the urge to smile.
“But you think somebody can.”
Adam shrugged.“Feels like a reasonable assumption.”
“But how would we everfindthem?”
Adam could see how much the question meant to her.He pushed a loose curl of hair back from her cheek—and waited, because he knew there was moreshe still needed to say.
She drew in a deep, unsteady breath.“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this… thisplacethat’s living inside me.”
“Then we’ll find out,” Adam vowed to her.“You and me.Together.Whatever that means.Got that?”
Her eyes were wide with feeling as she nodded.
Adam couldn’t help himself.He leaned down for a kiss, soft and gentle like the seal of a promise.
“Now let’s go get that damned kid,” he declared.
?
Adam smelled the river before he saw it, the distinct aroma of wet stone and mud carrying through the thick heat of the afternoon.Sound came next in a soft rush of moving water.
Kalb stiffened, quivering.Adam quickly snatched hold of his collar as a new noise emerged from the low susurration of the water—a number of men calling back and forth to each other from a short distance away.
Adam crouched down in the thick ferns that grew between the slender trees.He gave Kalb’s ears a scratch.“Good boy.Now stay here.”
“That dog has absolutely no idea how to stay,” Ellie warned him.
Kalb sat, panting at them with a blankly waiting expression.
“See?”Adam murmured back.
He crept forward through the underbrush, keeping low.A few yards further, the land dropped steeply away in a muddy cliff.Adam lowered himself to his belly and snaked forward until he could see over the edge of it—which thankfully wasn’t terribly high off the ground.
The river lay before him, a softly curving band of gray water roughly twenty yards across.The surface was smooth, but Adam could tell that the water was running fast, fueled by the rains.In places, it already flooded over the banks.
There would have been no swimming it safely even if there hadn’t been an Indian Army platoon working just below.
The detachment numbered around thirty, which was more than enough to mean trouble.They all wore turbans, which were standard issue for Indian Army sepoys.The beards on all their faces weren’t, signaling to Adam that he was probably looking at a Sikh company.
The men were building a pontoon bridge using lumber from the riverbank.Two sections already extended out into the water.A third would get them the rest of the way across.
With a hissing rush, a tree collapsed below Adam’s perch.A handful of the soldiers efficiently attacked it with axes and saws.
Ellie wriggled into place beside him, a streak of mud marring the freckles on her nose.“Do you see Borthwick?”
“Not yet.”
“What about Jacobs?Or Vanika?”
Adam made another scan of the band of men—and suppressed a sigh.“Found her… with another old friend.”
