Page 204 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“Both Nsalu and Miriam prioritize facts, though. And they’re angry about the murders of their kin.” Jonathan said. “It’s Paveland Senni you’ll have to watch. They’ve been aligned with the pro-secrecy faction for years, and Senni is actively looking forElpis.He and my father are close friends.”
“And your father?” I finally got up the nerve to ask the one question I hadn’t wanted the answer to ever since Fallon had first winged his way to Inis Oírr. “Will he be there?”
I was summoned to stand before the Council of the Magi. And Caleb Lynch was one of its members.
Jonathan, however, shook his head. “I don’t think so. He’s been in hiding since Manzanita, and my contact at the Brig says he’s been missing since then. I found traces, but I don’t think they have more information than I do. So there should be just the six of them.”
“Instead of seven?”
“Eight,” Robbie corrected me as he steered the car down a narrow dirt road that couldn’t possibly lead to a school, of all places. “No one has replaced Penny—but perhaps you will, love.”
Jonathan turned and offered a subdued smile over the back of his seat. “It’s a magic number.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is that a sorcerer thing?”
“No, physics.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. If this was the version of Jonathan Lynch I got all the time, maybe being mates wouldn’tbe so bad. I rather liked the dorky physics professor. Him, I understood.
The car passed into a grove of alder and hazel trees, and magic grew thick in the air.
“We’re nearly there, aren’t we?”
Shadows covered my companions’ faces. They didn’t answer me. They didn’t need to.
The grove split, and the sky darkened as we approached a massive rock face soaring several hundred feet to the top of a rounded hill that sloped to each side and disappeared into theforest. In a way, it looked like an oversized version of the passage tomb we’d just toured with Rachel. If passage tombs were made for giants.
At the bottom of the face was a door carved into the stone with no other markers of civilization. I had the feeling that if we weren’t allowed to see it, we wouldn’t. A school of sorcery and magic would have no problem hiding itself in the hill.
Robbie parked, and we all got out. Robbie approached the door, palm out and eyes blazing, and recited a spell in yet another language I couldn’t guess at. The door swung open, and he stood aside for Jonathan and me to enter.
Space yawned before us.
A deep, cavernous hall had been hollowed directly into the hill, far enough that I couldn’t make out the shadowed end. The roof, tall enough to house a gothic cathedral, appeared to be held up by monolithic stone towers that recalled the henges dotting all the British Isles. These, however, were at least ten times the height of Stonehenge. Vaulted ceilings also recalled the Middle Ages, and the woven banners hanging from them, which may have extended two or three stories down from massive beams, were embroidered with insignia that looked vaguely Celtic along with words in Latin.
IGNIS
UNDA
VENTUS
SAXUM
Flame. Wave. Wind. Rock.
Sorcery specialties? There were subtypes of seers, so I could only suppose sorcerers had them too. Maybe they were the foundations for houses within the school. It was England, after all, even if nothing else about this place seemed remotely comfortable for children.
Hogwarts, this was not.
“You fools.”
A thick French accent echoed off the stone walls and floor like a pinball shot through the dark, followed by the clipped footsteps of the female owner.
We turned to where a tall, dark-haired woman with blood-red lips was exiting a corridor at the end of the hall. Dressed in a sleek suit the color of shadows and her hair pulled into a severe bun, she looked like she was better prepared to do battle on Wall Street than in a classroom.
I straightened, suddenly conscious of the way several pieces of my hair refused to stay pulled back in their braid and the faded state of the knee-length black dress I’d last worn on the morning of my dissertation defense. I’d tried to neaten my appearance when I changed in Newcastle upon Tyne, but I shouldn’t have bothered.
“Celine.” Jonathan didn’t sound altogether happy to see her. His hand twitched while the other lightly swung a briefcase to and fro.
