Page 49 of The Mage on the Hill
The metal, which might have been steel or might’ve been something else, came apart in his hands when he pulled on it. The shapes were strange, and he thought they were words or runes, but he couldn’t read them. The twisting hallway wasn’t one anymore, and he ran through strange caverns. He tripped and fell, coming down hard on the uneven floor.
Underneath his hands were ropes, strangely fuzzy and unyielding. No, not ropes, roots. The whole tunnel was made of roots, and he had to pick his way carefully now or risk breaking an ankle.
All the while he called out, though his voice made no sound—Darius! Darius! Darius!
THREE HOURSand four backtracks along the trail later, Darius was tired, sweaty, and had no way to know how much farther they had to go. They’d been traveling in a roughly northwesterly direction, sometimes crossing roads or small creeks. His hands were bleeding in several places from fighting with thorn bushes, his boots were soaked, his right knee ached abominably, and he was more than done with Arden’s running list of complaints.
To put the icing on this anxiety-layered irritation cake, they’d reached a boggy part of the woods where he’d lost the trail. Too much water interference. “Zubayr.”
“Me?” Zubayr twitched around to face him, eyes wide. “I can get the water out of your way, I guess? Though I’d rather not disturb things more than we have to.”
Arden stalked to the edge of the waterlogged land, cocking his head to one side, then the other. “I’m on Zubayr’s side of the web. If he helps me with the Water part, I can find the Toby signal for you.”
“By our powers combined,” Zubayr muttered. “Very Captain Planet.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Really? Didn’t you watch any cartoons as a kid?”
Arden’s sniff was a hair shy of melodrama. “I had more important things to do than turn my brain into mush.”
“Gods, you must’ve been a miserable child.”
It pleased Darius more than it should have when his growl echoed over the bog. “Less snark. More finding.”
Zubayr had the grace to appear shamed as he crouched by the water’s edge and placed a palm on the soggy ground. Arden glared in offense, but he took Zubayr’s hand, and together they began to cast out among the bog plants.
“Anything?” Darius cringed at the snarl.
“Give me a minute, Mr. All Powerful,” Arden murmured. “What I’m searching for is a little more subtle than your direct Animus connection.”
“Watch your feet,” Zubayr said a moment too late as Arden stepped in a deep depression.
“I’m never going to be dry again.” Arden shook something off his foot as he stepped back onto higher ground. “My feet are going to rot off.”
“Shutup, Arden, and concentrate.” Zubayr tugged at his hand to get him moving again.
Darius followed slowly, waiting each time they moved forward only to stop and switch direction again. Their progress across the mats of bog plants was agonizingly slow but always eventually forward. He clenched his fists hard against his rising impatience.Every step, every inch, we’re closer. Just keep walking.
The bog crossing couldn’t have been more than a few hundred yards. It only felt like miles. Finally, Darius picked up the trail again at an ancient holly at the edge of the spongy, sodden ground. The holly had received the transmission from a nearby maple—and they were off at a better clip again.
Elias met them when they next hit a winding country road. He waved Darius over and leaned out of his truck’s window. “You’re moving in a pretty straight line now, Dar. I’m driving to the next road on your course to see if there’s anything. Might speed things up if I see a likely place.”
“Do that.” Darius patted the hood of the truck as he strode around it and plunged back into the woods.
Arden followed him, grumbling about poison ivy in the dense underbrush while Zubayr asked how he could be a Life mage when he apparently hated all life so much. To preserve his sanity, Darius ignored them. From tree to tree he proceeded, sometimes along root highways, sometimes along moss networks, and from time to time along the vines of sleepy wisteria. He was puzzling out a route from a stand of clustered maples when Zubayr’s phone rang.
“Elias? Oh, all right. Putting you on speaker.” Zubayr held the phone out for all of them to hear.
Elias’s voice came through tinny and small. “Dar? I’m on Stillswamp. It’s the next little not-officially-named road you’re gonna come to. I think I’ve found it.”
“Why?” Every nerve in Darius’s body stood on end.
“Why do I think that? You better come have a look. This is some weird shit, old man.”
Despite complaints from his knee, Darius took off at a jog, heading in as straight a line as he could toward where the trees thinned again. Zubayr and Arden most likely followed, but he couldn’t hear them over his own crashing through the brush and the hammering of his heart.
He burst out onto the road and stumbled, surprised to have run out of woods so suddenly. Elias’s truck sat up the road a few hundred yards, so he adjusted course and kept running. By the time he’d reached Elias, who stood by the side of the road, arms crossed, jaw clenched, Darius could make out what had disturbed him so.
