“I have the key,” Kerralyn said, holding it up.
The statue’s eyes brightened, glowing blue. “Leave now or be removed.”
Kerralyn’s eyes flew toward the base of the statue. “They always ignored me. I thought we could slip past them.”
“Too late for that now,” Derren said.
“We could come back again tomorrow,” Lexie said.
“We’ll never get to the good books if we do.” Kerralyn’s gaze remained trained on the statue. “The librarian won’t allow us near them.”
“Then figure something out fast,” I said.
“We need to distract it or take the wards down.”
Take down wards? Stripping wards went well beyond my magical abilities, assuming something like that was even possible. An ancient court like this would have indestructible wards.
“Distraction I can do,” Derren called out. He darted toward the far end of the foyer, a blur of dark leather. The statue’s eyes flared like twin moons, and a beam of blue-hot magic shot out, catching him mid-step. Frost bloomed up his boots, locking him in place. He shucked them before the ice sank in and returned to us, his stockings whispering across the floor.
Lexie nodded and sidled toward a shelf, murmuring words in a lilting cadence. I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe one of the spells she’d recently learned. The statue’s head swiveled slowly until it faced her, the blue glow intensifying. She stopped dead, her hands raised.
I wasn’t going to stand here while my friends were frozen in place. Reaching for my magic, I pushed outward, trying to shove the statue back with the same force I’d used on smaller obstacles. The statue barely quivered.
I clenched my teeth. The thing was anchored like it had grown from the floor.
Pherin fluttered from my shoulder. Something pressed into my mind, layer upon layer, and I got the feeling she wanted me to see past the stone itself.
“What?” I asked, still pushing uselessly.
“Triple-bound protections don’t hold without a keystone,” Kerralyn said, her brow furrowed.
Derren grinned. “I bet we can break this with our magic. What else?”
“The anchor point must be physical,” she chanted, her mind focused inward. “Old Ryndhal’s treatise on siege magic said they favored stone carved with… No, that’s when they feared counter-chanting—” She shook her head, her words tumbling faster. “Salt lines burn magic thin, but only if the caster’s blood is mortal. White ash could fracture containment circles in the old northern style. And there was that account inThe Breach of Lormere—ah!—binding spells woven through sound can be unpicked if?—”
She cut herself off, her eyes snapping to the base of the statue as if she could see something the rest of us couldn’t.
Pherin fluffed her small feathers, and the impression she sent me sharpened.Threads. Tangled, humming, alive.
I shouted it out. “Threads. Tangled. Humming. Alive.”
Kerralyn’s head whipped toward me, her eyes suddenly bright. “Threads? You canseethem?” Her voice dropped. “Most people can’t, not unless the wards want to be seen. Look harder, Isi. Follow the hum.”
Now that she’d said it, the subtle sound pricked my ears. Actually, it pricked across my skin like a swarm of bees brushing wings over my arms. I narrowed my gaze on the faint wisp of something above the statue’s platform, willing my vision to slip past it, to snag on something. “I do. I see…something.”
The statue scraped one granite foot across the stone floor, the sound rasping through the room.
“You have no sanction here,” he intoned, his voice deeper, darker, as if grinding up from the earth itself. His shadow stretched over us, the sword in his hand catching a glint of the fairy orbs overhead.
“Hurry, Isi,” Kerralyn hissed, her gaze flicking from me to the guardian. “Before he decides we’re trespassersandprey. Tell me if the threads are knotted or running clean. That will tell me how to cut them.”
Pherin sent a second wash of intent through me that wasn’t quite words but carried the feeling ofpush back, not forward.
Do you have something for this?I asked her silently.
She fluffed again. An impression bloomed in my mind, strands tangled like cobwebs but humming with power. A knot sat in the center, and I suspected it might be the binding holding the guardian to the wards.
“Center,” I called out.
