“OK,” she said, trying not to think of Martinelli or death or anything but the subject at hand.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. He cleared his throat. “Have any wizards examined me? That is, doctors who are wizards?”
“Yes, one—a Wizard Hillier. I liked him, but I watched him like a hawk just in case.”
“Did he notice anything odd? Any sign of magical interference?”
“No,” she said. “Should he have?”
“I think there’s something keeping me in the coma. Something tangled up with motor control, maybe. I get a hint of it every time I try to move—I can’t do it, and it’s very painful, like crossing a line and getting an electric shock. And here, dreamside, if I reach out to try to feel the edges of whatever I’m in that separates us, the same thing happens. That’s what pulled me out last night. I touched it and woke up.”
She stared aghast at the empty space where he presumably stood. “Do you think Wizard Hillier cast something on you to keep you from waking up?”
“Let’s hope so, because that sort of spell should be reversible.”
“If it’s not that …”
He groaned. “Then it’s probably the aftereffects of the weapon. And that, I’m afraid …” He trailed off. She didn’t need the rest of the sentence to know he thought there would be no reversing that.
Breathe. No panicking. She pushed to her feet and put her hands on the invisible wall between them. Just as before, touching it on this side had no obvious consequences. “Can you see anything in there? Anything at all?”
“No.”
She took another deep breath and focused on what she wanted: the wall disintegrating—small pieces cracking off, bigger ones, a complete collapse.
Nothing happened. It was hard to picture in fine detail the destruction of something you couldn’t see. In fact, it was hard to see anything now, so dark had the forest become.
She gritted her teeth and visualized the noonday sun streaming down on them, unhindered by the leafless trees, hitting every part of this sinister barrier.Let there be light…
“Oh,” she gasped, temporarily blinded as the dreamscape abruptly accommodated her. To Peter, she added, “Look again—if there are any cracks in your prison, you’ll see sunlight peeking through.”
He hummed something tuneless under his breath while he looked. As her sight returned, she found shimmering before her an amorphous shape roughly Peter’s height. She could see the forest through it, but it wasn’t quite transparent. An odd pattern seemed to be spread across it, repeated thousands of times over, lines and strokes glinting darkly in the sun. She leaned in to see them better.
Then she stumbled backward, adrenaline-spiked dread in her veins. Runes—the same rune etched into the payload stone, the one that wizards called “the grave.”
Peter was trapped in a shroud of death, and there seemed no question what had done it.
“Oh! Good morning—come in.”Sue Clark’s welcoming smile flickered. “Are you all right?”
Beatrix tried to smile back. “Tired. I finally got a job—started it a few days ago, in fact, and I haven’t had a moment until now to come and tell you.”
“Beatrix! That’s wonderful news.”
“Just in time, too. But I’ve been neglecting you. How are you feeling? How’s little Will and everyone else?”
“Good, all of us.” Sue hesitated. “And Omnimancer Blackwell? Any change?”
Beatrix shook her head, an answer at once true and false.
“We want him back, too,” Sue murmured. “Everybody in town does.”
A few seconds passed as Beatrix struggled for control of herself. She didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want the answer. But she forced the words out: “Did he—did he give you anything? For the baby, I mean?”
Sue’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s right—I never showed you! You must see this.”
Beatrix followed her to the bedroom, heart quivering. Inside, over the bassinet in which Will lay sleeping, miniature planets turned lazily around a bright yellow sun.
Sue touched the tiny Earth, all blues and greens. “He’ll happily stay in his bassinet for hours, staring up at it. All the children love it. I can’t properly express how kind it was of Omnimancer Blackwell to give Will something so beautiful.”
