They scrambled up, looking around with an academic enthusiasm that was so pronounced, neither noticed their arms were touching, their hands not so much brushing against each other as mingling in a way that would have been almost unbearably thrilling under other circumstances.
The world gleamed like a tear-filled eye. The monolith was on fire, blue flames dancing along its length. A ray of energyemerged from its tip, silver-bright, angling down from the hill’s summit like a great translucent path until it struck a field almost a mile away.
“Intense,” Elodie breathed.
“It must be at least seven thousand conjures,” Gabriel said. He looked around. “Where’s my thaumometer?”
“There.” Elodie pointed to pool of copper and glass bubbling in the grass a few yards away. Then her stomach lurched as she belatedly recalled the human element of geography. “Is everyone all right?”
“Nggh,” Professor Jackson replied from where he lay on his back nearby, glasses askew.
“I want to go home!” Algernon howled as he clutched the ground. Mumbers stared dazedly at a patch of wheat that had previously been his hat.
“It didn’t reach as far as I expected,” Gabriel murmured, frowning at the thaumaturgic energy beam. Beneath it, hedges were shattering and wildflowers turning to bright dust. Birds flew up like feathered screams, trailing magic that set the air briefly alight. And where the beam met earth, fragments of rainbows swirled, as if a pot of thaumaturgic gold lay there.
“All this energy must be originating fromsomewhere,” Elodie said. “Maybe the source is in that field.”
“What on earth are we going to do?” Professor Jackson asked as he pushed himself up from the ground, glasses swinging from one ear. “If you’ll excuse the little pun, ha ha.”
Elodie grinned at him. “I’m going down to take a look,” she said. Turning to her kit, she took out a utility belt containing various emergency gadgets, such as a compass and measuring tape, and began to wrap it around her waist.
“Can I come too?” Mumbers asked eagerly.
“No,” Gabriel said. He pulled a short telescope from his own kit and weighed it in his hand. Blanching, Mumbers stepped back.
“Would you help Mr. Jennings down to the village?” Elodie asked the man, smiling distractedly at him. “Professor Jackson will escort you, for your safety.”
At the sound of his name, the professor looked up from smacking his jacket pockets in search of another sandwich. “What? What?”
“Take these men back to Dôlylleuad,” Elodie ordered him while checking the gauges on her portable weather station before slipping the device into her skirt pocket.
“Telegraph the Home Office to advise them of the situation here,” Gabriel added as he strapped the telescope around the calf of one leg. “We’re going to need help.”
“Also please take our kits with you,” Elodie said. “I don’t want to carry any extra load.”
“And you should probably warn Aberystwyth,” Gabriel said, “in case of spillage along the line.”
“And make sure the people of Dôlylleuad are safe.”
“And most of all,don’t poke at any more things.”
“Right.” The old professor nodded in a way that made it clear he’d not processed even half of what they’d told him. “Do you want to use my bicycle?”
Elodie straightened from tucking a dowsing rod into her left boot. “Thank you, but I know a shortcut.” She grinned sidelong at Gabriel. He’d donned his long dark coat and was placing a map in an inside pocket, but he seemed to sense her attention; he looked up with cool, dispassionateprofessionalism. And yet, his eye held something that Elodie would describe as an anti-glint: excitement so sober, so dignified, it was the blackest black, more intense than any sparkle. She quirked her grin.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” he said.
They turned to face northwest. The cobalt flames of the burning monolith illuminated them with a witchical glow. The breeze stirred their hair. In unison, each hooked iron and gold around their left ear. Altogether they presented a heroic picture, lacking only the dramatic billowing of capes for a full effect.
“Botheration,” Elodie whispered, tipping her head a little toward Gabriel so he might hear her. “If we don’t survive, someone’s going to find my pile of underwear at the inn.”
He laughed.
Laughed.
Or perhaps it was just the wind, for in the next half a second his face was stony once more. The opposite might be said for Elodie’s heart, however, which began to flutter more wildly than a summer storm.
