Page 42 of Spelunking Through Hell

“Yes, those are a major one. I can’t actuallyclosethe border between us and the world we’re still somehow connected to, but I can make it more difficult to penetrate. The translation spell that runs through the public areas is another. It slows language acquisition on the occasions when someone new does arrive, but also eases integration sufficiently that we have fewer conflicts and less panic. For the most part, my people cooperate to our common advantage, and we have no slavery, rape, or murder. I suspect the crossroads didn’t care for my improvements to their terrarium.”

“They wouldn’t,” I said. “So if the biggest standing spell is the barrier, what happens to the linguistics when you run out of magic taken from new arrivals?”

“We’re working on learning to speak to each other outside thespell’s border,” he replied. “I don’t have enough personal magic in this world to fuel that one on my own. The barrier will hold until it doesn’t. You were the first person to arrive in some time.”

I paused. “About three years?”

“Yes. How did you—”

“I think I might know why that is, but it’s going to take a long time to explain and just distract us from the conversation we’re trying very badly not to have, so if you could trust me on this? I don’t think you need the barrier anymore.” The crossroads wasn’t going to be pitching anyone through the walls of the universe, and the locals on Cornale hadn’t been the sort to go hunting for ways into the dead world they hated.

Thomas looked at me gravely for a long, long moment before he said, “I’ll trust you, providing you will explain at some point. And I’ll answer the question we’re both avoiding first, but once I do, I’ll expect the same reply from you.”

“Of course.”

“Very well, then. Using the magic I get from new arrivals to fuel the standing spells has freed up my own, limited as it is here, for more selfish uses.” He let go of my hand to press two fingers to the tattoo on his throat. “This anchors a spell that keeps me from aging at the customary rate. It took me five years to design it and gather the necessary strength to power it, but once started, it continued running, and will until I make it stop.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, looking briefly sheepish. “I still had hope, five years in, that I was clever enough to find a way out of this place, out of this predicament. If I could return to the wider reality, I could navigate my way home. I knew I needed to get back to you and the children before too much time had passed, and I know time can run at different rates in different dimensions. So I... stopped myself, for lack of a better phrasing.”

He’d been afraid of the same thing I was: of adding too much time to the distance between us and not being able to find his way home. “That makes sense. Was that always something you could do?”

“It’s something any sorcerer who’s managed to grow past their element can do,” he said. “Which brings us to the part I suspect I’m not going to like very much.”

“I know what you want to ask,” I said. “So go ahead. Ask.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, before he opened them, looked at me, and said, “If I were a betting man, I’d layodds that right now, physically, you’re not of legal drinking age in the United States, unless it’s been lowered to nineteen while I’ve been gone.”

“Nope,” I said. “It’s still twenty-one.” Thomas might be the only person who could look at me and accurately estimate the current age of my body. He’d been there the first time I passed through all these years, when I’d been moving at the normal rate, and not going in jumps and starts. “But I was never a big drinker, unless you count the cooking sherry.”

“I’ve looked you over fairly thoroughly at this point, and none of the tattoos I’ve seen have been keyed to counteract aging. Nor would they be enough, as single-use charms, unless they were activated as soon as time had passed, and then you’d have no room left for anything else.”

“That’s not how we’ve been putting me back together.”

“So whathaveyou been doing?”

“Oh, it’s easy,” I said brightly, and began to explain the process, starting with the moment when they lowered me into the bath and continuing until I passed out. He only interrupted twice, the first time to ask if I was awake for the whole process, and the second time to ask how many sessions I’d been through. Neither of my answers seemed to make him very happy. After the second he got off the bed and started pacing around the room, still naked. It would have been funny, if he hadn’t looked like he was getting ready to murder someone with his bare hands. I shrank back into the pillows.

“Thomas?” I asked, voice small. “Are you mad at me?”

“What? No. If anything, at myself. I should have anticipated that you’d continue to be yourself after I was gone and would orchestrate some means of coming after me. And I should absolutely, without question, have prepared you better to take care of yourself out there. This was all predictable. I should have seen it coming.” He turned to look at me. “I am, of course, absolutely furious with your adoptive uncle, and will be seeing how muchheenjoys being skinned alive while forced to remain conscious and aware of the entire process, although I’m afraid I lack the stomach or the malice to put him through the process once for every time he had it done to you. He’ll die much more quickly than I believe is fair, or just, but at times we must accept our limitations.” His eyes were hard. “As long as he dies screaming, I’ll consider this debt paid.”

I watched from the bed as he resumed his pacing, a frown on my own face “I don’t understand why you’re so angry,” I said. “Naga hasbeen helping me. If it weren’t for him, I would never have been able to stay alive long enough to find you. I’ve been injured pretty badly a whole bunch of times now—badly as in ‘verge of death’ badly. And he’s always gotten me back on my feet.”

“Back on your feet, covered in carnival charms, and back to making him the richest man in his home dimension,” Thomas snapped, before he paused and looked at my expression. Visibly calming himself, he walked back to the bed and sat on the very edge, twisting so he could watch me as he spoke. “He told you that you needed single-use charms because you weren’t a sorcerer, correct?”

“Correct,” I said warily.

“That’s true under normal circumstances. If you’re not magically gifted, you can’t draw on the pneuma yourself. You can use portable charms and objects, like the darks that people make for bogeymen, regardless of any inborn capabilities. Tattoos are a riskier proposition. They’re anchored to your flesh, and if you haven’t the magic to power them, they’ll consume you instead. I would never risk a non-practitioner with magical tattooing.” His voice turned hard again at the end, and I had to fight the urge to shrink away.

This wasThomas. He was the man I’d married, the man I’d thrown away everything to make my way back to. More, he was naked. While I was naked, too, my mother’s guns were at the foot of the bed in easy reach. If things went poorly, I’d bet on me before I’d bet on him.

“But those are normal circumstances,” he continued. “In the case of someone like a routewitch, who can use distance itself to fuel their magic, tattooing is much safer.”

“I’m not a routewitch,” I protested.

“No, but you’ve been traveling between dimensions. Remember how they work? Every time someone passes between worlds, a trace of the pneuma from the membrane separating them adheres to the traveler’s skin. It’s why snake cults remain so popular.”

---