Elfhome

32: SCRY

“This shouldn’t hurt,” Tinker assured everyone as she used a handcrafted wax and iron-filing crayon to mark out a spell on the white stone.

Merry meeped nervously at the center of the spell.

Tinker was slightly mystified by the lack of trust she’d been encountering all day. She had heard rumors that the University of Pittsburgh had set up a magic-research lab near the enclaves, complete with a large-scale spell-casting area. It took her several hours to track down the small building, tucked just across the Rim, downhill and out of sight of the faire ground. All the university people she talked to acted like she was going to blow it up or something. They’d been reluctant to admit that the building existed at first, and then to give her permission to use it.

Really — the only thing she’d personally blown up was parts of Ginger Wine’s enclave — and she didn’t think that should be held against her.

“It took three years and ten million dollars to build!” the university officials kept repeating, although when she finally reached the building, she had no idea why. While well built with cunning use of glass, stone, ironwood, and poly-resin, it was basically just one massive slab of polished white marble resting on bedrock with a glass roof overhead to keep off the rain and snow.

Yet even Oilcan was voicing concern. “Tink, I don’t really think this is a good idea.”

“I’ve done this spell before.” Tinker paused to dredge up memories of the last time she experimented with it. If she remembered correctly, the results had been disappointingly unimpressive. “On you even.”

“Yes, I know.” Oilcan flipped his datapad so she could read his notes. They read: The little mad scientist cast this on all of us today, she’s not pleased, is all I can say. Shakalakaboomboom. “I’ve let you talk me into lots of crazy things.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No. That’s not the point. You’ve never known what this spell does.”

“Not entirely.” She had to bow to the truth of that statement. “But I think I understand it now. It’s been a very informative summer. It didn’t hurt you, and it won’t hurt her.” At least she was fairly sure it wouldn’t. “I’ve cast it on Blue Sky, and it didn’t hurt him.”

“It made me dizzy for the rest of the day,” Blue Sky said unhelpfully. “John told me never to let you cast spells on me again.”

“It was the two hours in the Tilt-A-Whirl that made you dizzy,” Tinker said. “And I warned you about that.”

No one looked confident about her except for Pony and Stormsong, which was why she loved them best.

“Look, it’s a divination spell.” She paused in transcribing the spell onto the floor to show Oilcan her datapad.

Her grandfather had given her the non-indexed digital copy of the Dufae codex after teaching her the key to the ancient book’s spell-lock. Most likely it was his way of sharing the family secrets with her while slowing her down with the non-searchable copy. She spent most of her childhood building indexes and cross-linking the pages, testing various spells and adding her own notes to those of Dufae. She had this spell memorized, but for everyone’s peace of mind, including her own, she was triple-checking her work.

“The spell doesn’t act on the focus at all, but detects power connected to the focus. That’s why it didn’t seem to do anything when we were kids. Blue Sky has no connections, and our link to the Stone Clan Spell Stones is active only when we cast the resonance spell.”

“Why do you think they’re linked to an active power source?” He meant the kids in general. Merry was acting as guinea pig since the others had been so traumatized by the oni.

“I’m just gathering data. It’s what a scientist does when presented with the unknown. If it would make you feel better, I can do the spell on you first, just to prove it does what I think it does.”

“Yes, it would.”

Tinker finished drawing the spell as Oilcan and Merry changed places. There were several divination spells in the codex and it delighted her to no end to see that all the others had fingering diagrams beside them. Once she had Oilcan and the kids comfortable with her casting spells on the children, she planned to cut loose.

She quadruple-checked her transcription and spoke the command word. The outer shell of the spell powered up, creating a soft glowing dome over the entire spell, enclosing Oilcan inside the spell’s influence. The first inner ring powered up, a looping function that would keep the spell active until she canceled it. The symbols flickered one after another as the spell cycled around and around. The third ring created a second dome, fractions of an inch smaller than the first, marking out the true divination section of the spell. Showy but static at the moment.

“Okay, set up resonance,” Tinker told Oilcan.

Oilcan smoothly called the Stones, and a bright spike appeared in the spell’s half-dome, pointing roughly south by southwest.

“Is that the direction of the Stone Clan Spell Stones?” Tinker asked.

Pony nodded and Stormsong added, “It’s roughly in the same place as Huntsville, Alabama, is on Earth.”

Tinker knew where Huntsville was — birthplace of Saturn rockets — so it gave her a good idea of the location. “Wow, why so far from the coast?”

“The Stones must be built on very powerful springs of magic. There are very few points in the world where they can be placed.”

Oilcan dropped his resonance with the Spell Stones and waited for her to cancel the spell. “Okay, so you do know what the spell does.”

“I’m so hurt by your lack of faith.”

“I let you cast the spell on me.”

Tinker supposed that did forgive a host of things. She canceled the divination spell and shooed him out of the center.

Merry took courage from the lack of any harm to Oilcan and returned to the center without any prodding.

Tinker made sure that none of the lines had blurred or shorted out. Once she was sure that the spell hadn’t been altered by the previous casting, she spoke the command word.

The entire building lit up brilliantly with streams of energy pouring through the focus.

Merry danced at the center of the spell, whimpering. “Sama?”

“It’s okay!” Oilcan called. “Cancel the spell.”

Tinker canceled the spell, and Merry darted out of the center and into Oilcan’s arms.

“What was that?” Oilcan whispered urgently in English.

Tinker shook her head mutely. She didn’t know, but it couldn’t have been good.

What the hell were Oilcan’s kids?

Tinker couldn’t even be sure all of the kids were like Merry. She wanted to test them all, but the spell’s spectacular reaction to Merry had rattled the kids badly. She couldn’t look into their fear-filled eyes — remember the excrement-filled pits she found them in — and force them to cooperate. They were still too fragile. She let Oilcan take them off to do something soothing: play music or pet baby animals or something.

It left Tinker with two meager data points: the children were all genetically similar, and Merry, the control, was connected to something big.

Tinker had theories. The Skin Clan obviously had bred the kids to harness some kind of exotic power. Just like her and Oilcan, the ability had been passed down, generation after generation, locked away only by ignorance. Obviously the Skin Clan knew the key to unlock the kids’ abilities and desperately wanted control of that power.

Tinker flicked through the digital pages of the codex, tapping on the links to her notes relating to the various finger diagrams. She had applied every encryption method she could think of to the diagrams. The closest she had gotten was assigning five-digit numbers to each set of drawings. Zero for laedin position, where the finger curled tight. One for sekasha position, where the finger curled from the first knuckle. Two for domana position with the difficult only first knuckle crooked. Three for the full royal position with the finger fully extended, bowing to no one.

She had noticed the “numbers” corresponded to a periodic table — like hierarchy, since the numbers never repeated. She had theorized that the codex was missing spells since there were numbers skipped — like 32103—which set up resonance to the Spell Stones.

If she had ever grasped the meaning of the drawings, it would have been only a matter of time before she unlocked it all. She giggled at the thought of a six-year-old human wielding the power of the Spell Stones. Oh, the elves would have been horrified.

She sobered as she considered everything that could have happened. Sooner or later, the Stone Clan domana in Huntsville would have noticed that she was tapping their Spell Stones. The sekasha would have been alerted that there were unaccountable domana in Pittsburgh. The Wind Clan elves would have searched for the interlopers. If they had been found, she and Oilcan would have been exiled to Stone Clan holdings.

Tinker frowned down at her datapad. Had her grandfather withheld the one spell, rendering the rest inert? Had he kept it secret to protect her and Oilcan?

She blew out her breath. She should be focusing on the kids.

The children themselves might be ignorant of what they were — but it was possible that one of the Stone Clan adults would know. Unfortunately, Forest Moss was the only adult in Pittsburgh.